


The Way Forward

by Roanoke_Wilde



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, Aq Vetina, Backstory, Basically a Trip Through Din's Backstory But He's Hurt, Before Baby Yoda, Canon-Typical Violence, Child(ren) of the Watch, Coming of Age, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Death Watch (Star Wars), Death Watch Dad (but it's not all soft sorry), Death Watch wasn't the greatest honestly, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Din's buir, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Foundlings, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, I'm going to try to be as canonical as possible..., It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Mando'a Language (Star Wars), Maybe Some Light Romance Later, Memories, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), POV Din Djarin, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Pre-TV Show, Sick fic (sort of), Sort of AU because I make a lot of stuff up, Star Wars - Freeform, Tags Are Hard, The Covert, The Tribe - Freeform, The Way of the Mandalore, This Is The Way, Trauma, Whump, Wookiepedia will save my life, Young Din Djarin, Young Paz Vizsla, injured, possible trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27532693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roanoke_Wilde/pseuds/Roanoke_Wilde
Summary: Before Din Djarin accepted the bounty on the Child, his life as a Mandalorian-in-hiding was neither easy nor glorious. When he falls ill upon returning to the Covert one night, he must fight a battle he's not sure he wants to win, and his thoughts begin to wander to forbidden places. They begin to wander to his past--to all the choices that slowly made him into the man he is now. Perhaps it will take looking at the path he's traveled already before he can find his way forward.
Relationships: Brief Din Djarin/Xi'an, Light Din Djarin/Xi'an
Comments: 141
Kudos: 130





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Mando'a translations are at the end of the prologue.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Din returns to the Covert after a particularly trying hunt. He's wounded, he has a headache the size of a bantha, and the fact that tonight is the night the Covert celebrates its founding doesn't necessarily help things. And neither does the fact that his former friend and fellow Mandalorian, Paz Vizsla, is intent upon making sure Din knows he doesn't want him here.

“ _Olarom norac_ ,” the Mandalorian seated just inside the door greeted Din as he slipped out of the dark evening and into the entrance of the Covert.

Din tried to nod in acknowledgement, but the moment he took his focus off staying upright and moving one foot forward at a time, blackness bubbled up at the edges of his vision. He must have swayed, too, because the Mandalorian before him stood up hesitantly, tucking her ready blaster into its holster.

“ _Cuyir gar shupur'yc_?” the Mandalorian asked. _Are you injured?_

Din gritted his teeth and came to a complete stop, resisting the urge to place a hand on the wall for support. Yes, he was injured. And no, he didn’t feel like dealing with it at the moment. Despite the stim shot he’d given himself a few hours earlier, pain had once again begun radiating from his various wounds, the most notable of which were on the back of his right thigh and calf. There may or may not have been some blood seeping through the thick material of his trousers as well.

With a delayed grunt rather than a solid response, he swung his bag off his shoulder, struggling for a moment to disengage it from the tattered remains of his cloak. His fingers trembled as he unfastened the clip and reached inside, and it took another few silent seconds before he was able to close them around what he was looking for: a bottle of aged spotchka and a satchel of pitifully wrinkled jogan fruits.

Swaying significantly now and cursing himself the entire time, he thrust the items out to the Mandalorian guarding the entrance.

“For tonight. For the Foundlings,” he said, opting out of Mando’a in favor of the Basic he was more accustomed to wrapping his tongue around.

The Mandalorian accepted the customary gifts—given voluntarily to celebrate the founding of this particular Covert years ago—but didn’t tilt her dark helmet away from him. She stepped closer when he stumbled again, one hand out in a cautious display of concern.

“I will you help you to the _baar'ur_ ,” she said quietly.

Din shook his head.

“I’m fine. Stay here and keep watch over the Covert.” Din swallowed, forcing his parched tongue to cooperate, and then cleared his throat for good measure. “We will need your vigilance more than ever tonight.”

His fellow Mandalorian hesitated but then nodded and stepped back to her station.

“Very well,” she said, her voice much more neutral than before. “Report to the _baar'ur_ , Mandalorian. _Ve'ganir pirusti iviin'yc_. This is the Way.”

Din nodded,

“This is the Way,” he said quietly. He could sense her attention shift to the food items he had given her, however, before he had even moved all the way past. It was just as well, he thought. He needed to return his attention to the arduous task of walking.

Din listened closely to the activity going on around him as he moved forward. The main chamber—positioned at the center of the web of old tunnels that was the Covert—was where most of the Tribe would be gathered tonight to recount history and tales of the honor and glory of the Mandalorian people and their homeland. There would be music, perhaps, if the older warriors felt particularly daring, and undoubtedly there would be one or two Foundlings prepared to come forward and swear to the Creed.

Afterwards, of course, the Mandalorians would retreat to their own rooms or secluded sectors of the Covert and, if possible, drink to the health and the spirit of their small community. They would know as they did so that each Mandalorian of age would be doing the same in the privacy of isolation. When they were finished, they would replace their helmets—if their location warranted it—and sleep.

Tomorrow would be a day like all others, but tonight—tonight was something special. For most of Din’s Tribe, that is. He didn’t seem himself being involved in too much of the festivities, though perhaps he could stop in to hear a tale or two.

He could hear the clear voice of the Armorer now, as he passed by the main thoroughfare to the center chamber, and he was half-tempted to lean his throbbing body against the wall to listen. She had never failed to captivate him with her storytelling, her command of and unflinching allegiance to the Creed. He had—and perhaps still did to a great degree—always admired her, even though he’d rarely received the honor of interacting with her one-on-one.

A particularly sharp flash of pain that reached even to the pit of his stomach spurred him onwards before he decided to surrender to the impulse. No, he would not listen tonight. Instead, he made his way in silence to the tiny, rough-chiseled alcove—barely as long as he was tall—that served as his quarters when he could afford to sleep on Nevarro.

After the worst waves of pain had subsided somewhat, he straightened and fastened the cloth over the entrance to his small room. Until it was pulled aside once more, it would indicate to the others that his helmet was off and that he could not be disturbed without adequate warning.

Din blew out a long breath as he eased himself onto the bare bed, which by itself took up most of the room. He let a moment pass before he pressed trembling fingers to the edges of his helmet and lifted it off.

The sudden rush of cool air against his flushed face was so sharp and biting that the waves of darkness roared up again in his vision, and the helmet slipped from his fingers to the floor with a dull clang that had him reaching a hand to the missing blaster at his hip on pure muscle-memory alone.

“ _Haar’chak_ ,” he cursed, using his free hand to push away the sweat-soaked hair pasted across his forehead. He could feel some of the dried blood on his glove flake off against his skin, and he grimaced, making short work of ripping the offending article of clothing from his fingers and casting it to the floor.

And then his head was spinning and it felt like fire was climbing his legs and there was such a heavy, heavy weight descending on his chest, crushing the air from his lungs, forcing his slow-beating heart out between the cracks of his ribs. Unconsciousness came faster than ever, and this time, Din didn’t fight it.

The next time he became aware of his surroundings, he was lying crookedly across the bed, his injured leg hanging off the side and his helmet once more on the floor beneath his listless fingers.

Din did not try to retrieve again. He lay there, pain pulsing through his temples to the curve of his skull and then to the back of his eyes, and listened. Focused on pulling breath in, letting it rustle out again. He tried to quell the uneasy feeling that he was in a cell on some dump-hole of a planet in the Outer Rim and not in the Covert where had grown up. His predicament did not make that easy.

He listened to the steps of Mandalorians in the hallway outside, to the low murmur of their voices as they returned from the main chamber. He listened to the ever-present _drip_ of some leaky pipes deep within the bowels of the discontinued sewer system. He listened to the metallic echo of the Armorer’s voice, still charming the Mandalorians who defied the dark hours of the night and their own exhaustion to capture her words.

He tried to focus on those sounds, and when that didn’t work and his mind returned once more to the exhaustion that throbbed through his entire frame, he tried to focus on the smells—dust and his own blood and the scent of singed skin and hair—and then the fact that it was almost totally black in the room, stale with long-trapped darkness.

The longer Din laid there, the more certain he became of one thing: he was sick. It was more than the wounds, he knew, though there was the possibility of infection at this point. It was more, too, than the exhaustion and the low but persistent fever he had refused to see the medic about a week earlier, when he came back from thick, humid Felucia.

It was—

A rough rapping on the stone wall of his alcove made Din jerk and subsequently wince in pain. His fingers fumbled for his battered helmet on the floor.

“ _Ge'talsol_?? You in there?”

Din sighed and laid his head back down, squeezing his eyes shut against the ripples in his vision that had resulted. It was Paz. Just Paz.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice coming out significantly rougher than he had expected it to.

There was a pause. Another couple of wide-handed thumps on the stone, indicating that his voice had still been weak enough to get lost somewhere between the bed and Paz’s ears.

“Anyone in there? I’d remind you that Foundlings aren’t allowed to take an Alcove until they’re of age.”

Din tried to let out a weary sigh as he managed to pull his helmet on, but it turned into a dry, rasping cough halfway to completion. He forced himself to his elbows when it stopped, fatigue pulling at every muscle from his neck to his feet.

“Yeah, Paz, it’s me,” he said, louder this time—at the expense of his burning throat.

He heard the man shift outside.

“Huh. I think finding a kid in there would have been less surprising…I figured you’d be out sharing a drink with your Imp buddies tonight instead.”

The contempt in his voice was stark even through the layer of Beskar and stone. Din clenched his jaw and remained silent, beginning to feel the strain of holding his torso up for so long in his weakened condition. He couldn’t afford to let the prodding sap his energy right now.

“Don’t bother showing up at the center chamber tonight, _Ge'talsol_ ,” Paz continued after the pause, his voice quieter but no less intense than before. “They’ll keep something for you to take with you on your way out, I’m sure. Just make sure you’re gone before first light. I know of one of my people who could use a place to stay.”

Paz didn’t even bother to hear any reply Din might have concocted before his steps were moving briskly away from Din’s alcove, in the direction of the hall. Din let himself fall onto the bed again, the rim of the helmet now digging into the curve of his neck.

The implication was all too clear, though Din found it surprisingly easy to ignore any of the hurt he might have usually felt at his former friend’s words. Maybe that was the only mercy whatever forces governed the universe had seen fit to bestow upon him tonight.

He laid there for a few moments, staring at the ceiling, which was spiderwebbed with cracks and fractures, oozing an indiscernible gray-green substance.

He knew he would not sleep.

He knew he could not think of the weight that trailed behind Paz’s words—the choices he had made to alienate himself from his fellow Mandalorians (friends?).

He knew he could not think of what would come in the morning, either, if he wished to rise before dawn broke—another day of bounty-hunting or running or fighting, as Paz had implied.

He had been in a situation like this before, wounded and feverish without any clear-cut reason; granted, at that time he had also had too much to drink, but that was beside the point. He only knew that thinking of such things was bound to do nothing but drive him closer to the blackness that fueled his illness. His feverish state would no doubt be chased by delirium before all was said and done—if it was to end in his recovery. And he could risk wandering so close to oblivion if that were the case because there was never any guarantee of a return in mind if not in body.

_Or could he risk it?_

Din sucked in a breath that needled the inside of his lungs and smelled of decay before slowly folding his bare hands over his ragged cuirass, right where he would feel his heart beating if the Beskar was not there to guard it.

Before he could second-guess himself, he then turned to the one thing he knew of to fill his mind completely and, with any luck, usher in an unconsciousness that would banish the pain, at least until he felt well enough to retrieve some Bacta.

These thoughts, he knew from experience, were the one thing that never failed to distract him from his most recent headache—and they were the one thing he had promised himself repeatedly to make disappear, to bury, to forget with every donning of his helmet and his Creed.

He would remember his home, who he once was, before the Covert.

He would remember the night his parents were killed and his fate as a Mandalorian was sealed.

Maybe then he would find his way forward again.

* * *

_**Mando'a Translations:** _

_Olarom norac:_ welcome back

_Cuyir gar shupur'yc?_ : are you injured?

_Baar'ur:_ medic

_Ve'ganir pirusti iviin'yc_ : heal quickly _or_ get better soon (rough translation)

_Haar’chak_ : an expletive

_Ge'tal_ _sol_ : the name Din has chosen to use in the Covert; a fusion of the Mando'a word for "red" and "one."


	2. A Path of Peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Din is excited when the day he is formally accepted into his parent's mysterious peacekeeping group finally arrives. He only knows the basics of their operations--that they are officials dedicated to preserving justice, peace, and freedom with as little violence as possible--but he is proud to be joining them nonetheless. But a shadow is fast gathering over what once seemed so cheerful, and he's not entirely sure why...

The thin Aq Vetina sunlight was warm on Din’s face as he peered out into the street.

It was far past sunrise—creeping towards noon already—but the air was clearer than it had been for days. A frisking breeze occasionally goaded the dust of the street into a frenetic dance, but each time it did, Din would inhale sharply, not wanting to miss the rich layers of scents drifting in from the market square—or, if he was _un_ lucky, the pungent odors of the dye shop not a few houses away from his own.

He was in the quieter, older sector of his village, but even so, he could clearly hear the usual bustle of people falling into the rhythms of their day. The other children, Din knew, would be busy playing between running errands for their parents and completing their chores. Binh and Mai would be among them, of course.

Din sighed through his nose and sagged a little heavier against the doorframe, feeling a soft kind of disappointment flutter up inside him—along with the tinge of nervousness.

Binh and Mai were his best friends, and while he knew that tomorrow he would be able to join them in playing once more, he half-wished he could _now_. Not to mention that there was always the possibility that things would simple be different after tonight—

But he also knew that today’s proceedings were an honor, something he could look forward to—

Din jumped as two hands grabbed his shoulders from behind and a voice materialized right next to his ear.

“Boo!”

He whirled around, breathless, and was met with the soft, smiling face of his mother. He grinned at her and then wrapped both arms around her waist, burying his head in her comforting smell—a smell like dusty flowers. The anxious flurry that had seemed so likely to grow a few seconds before diminished almost immediately to a mere buzz of expectation in his belly.

“Good morning, Din,” his mother whispered in return, planting a soft kiss on his dark head.

He pulled away and looked up at her.

“Is it time to begin getting ready, _amma_?”

His mother smiled down at him, loose strands of hair straggling around her peaceful face, and nodded.

“It is.”

* * *

Din did not feel entirely comfortable preparing for the ceremony with the strange man and woman still in his house.

They sat and talked in low voices around the table as Din and his mother retreated to the big bedroom to don his traditional red tunic and hood and to practice his recitations. The strangers had arrived nearly two weeks before, in the middle of a wind-lashed night.

The man had pounded on the door to Din’s house, waking all three of its occupants from a deep slumber, and Din had watched with wide eyes, heart thumping angrily in his chest, as his father sleepily picked his way across the floor to the door. When he opened it and the woman had nearly pitched forward into the house with a cry of pain, both of his parents came to life. She had clearly been injured, one leg stiff and bloody beneath the shredded cloth of her pants.

Din's mother had boiled water, procured strips of cloth for bandages, and coaxed the man to sit down and let the injured woman lie back on the bed. His father had set to work using what his wife provided to actually tend to the woman’s wound. They did not talk beyond what was necessary to deal with the situation, but Din knew that his parents did not know who the two strangers were—only that they needed help.

Nearly an entire day had passed before Din had dared ask his mother about their presence, which—as far as he knew—was a secret even from their neighbors. His father, overhearing his question, had come over so swiftly that it almost scared Din, made him think that perhaps he had said something forbidden, done something wrong.

But his father had merely knelt in front of his son, pushed his own wiry hair away from his eyes, and spoken earnestly.

“ _We cannot discuss these travelers, Din_ ,” he had said, his eyes pleading for understanding. “ _They have come long and far to receive our help. They are seeking peace, rest, justice, a haven. We must give them that, even if we are the only ones to do so. Do you trust this?_ ”

Din had hesitated, his eyes flickering over to the intense expression on his mother’s face as she watched from the stove. When his gaze landed once more within his father’s, however, he nodded. He understood those words—it was why he was going to attend the ceremony when he turned nine years old, wasn’t it? He understood that those were the ideas his parents had once fought bodily for—what they now lived for and what they were raising him to live within.

He would not speak of or _to_ the strangers, he decided. And, as it turned out, seldom would they bother speaking to him either.

Two weeks had passed in a tense, unspoken understanding between the Djarins and the strangers. The nights were punctuated by brief conversations between them and his parents or perhaps by even softer discussions between the still-healing woman and the man at her side. His father always sent Din away whenever he or his wife wished to speak with their guests, and Din always complied, but the curiosity burned inside him, held at bay only by the desire to prove his trust in his parents’ judgment.

Now, as Din stole glances at the man sitting in the kitchen—whose hands were creased around a steaming mug of Nevarran tea—he found that the curiosity was becoming too strong to ignore. He was almost a member of the Cadre of Peace. He was almost ready to begin learning the things his parents knew.

Din looked up at his mother as she intently fastened a red sash across his waist, securing it in an inconspicuous knot at the small of his back.

“Will I get to learn of our guests, when today is over?” he asked softly.

His mother looked at him. Din expected her to at least offer him a smile in response, but she seemed far away from him, thinking of something else. A faint fold appeared between her eyebrows, and Din frowned.

“ _Amma_? Are you OK?”

Her eyes searched his for a moment, and when she spoke, her voice was heavy.

“Yes, Din. You will learn many things once you become a part of the Cadre.”

Din cocked his head at her, and her lips flattened into something that might have been the precursor to a smile. She cupped a hand around one of his cheeks and slowly drew her thumb beneath his eye, warmth pooling beneath her hand and from her eyes. Din watched her, knowing he should not disturb the thoughts she was so obviously tangled in, unsure of what she was thinking but trusting that she would return to him when all was well once more.

And she did.

“Today, my son,” she said abruptly, removing her hand and standing up. “You will become a keeper of justice, of peace, of remembrance. You will become more than my child. You will become _our_ future.”

Din remained silent at the solemn words. His mother brushed invisible dust off his shoulders, straightened an indiscernible wrinkle in his tunic, and then looked at him again, held his gaze for a moment, broke it at last with finality.

“Very well—”

She was interrupted by a low rumble from far above them, a din that slowly grow in intensity until it became a vibrating roar. Din’s mother glanced sharply at the guests seated at the table, and Din watched in confusion as the man shook his head at her.

The roar faded as whatever ship was making the sound retreated into the distance. Din heard a soft exhalation of breath from his mother, and a question was on the tip of his tongue when she continued the thought that had been interrupted.

“I believe I heard your father at the door. Wait here a little longer—he wishes to speak with you, too.”

Din nodded, swallowing the curiosity again. He didn’t like the idea of standing still for even _longer_ , as restlessness was settling into his bones, pushing thoughts of a clear sky and wide-open streets and games with Binh and Mai into his head. But, once more, he forced himself to think of what this meant to his parents, of how long he had wondered about what his parents believed, of the fact that, though it would probably be a long and stale process, the induction ceremony today would be worth even the loss of a few extra hours with his friends.

His mother left the room and went to speak softly with the guests, and not long after, Din’s father came into view. He had a lopsided smile on his face, and he was already dressed in his own ceremonial garb. It was a more faded shade of red than Din’s perhaps, but it made him look official and strong. Din felt the irrepressible grin that spread over his face, in sync with the giddiness beginning to course through his system.

Din’s father knelt to eye-level with his son. He furrowed his eyebrows, swallowed, encased both of Din’s hands in the calloused skin of his own.

“Are you ready?” he asked, voice gruff.

Din nodded vigorously.

“I—you know why your mother and I waited for several years to let you be recognized in this way, do you not?”

Din nodded again, and when his father raised a prompting eyebrow, he spoke.

“You wanted to make sure that I was able to be a Cadre official. That I could understand what I was doing, like you do.”

Din’s father nodded, but then he added something Din had never heard from him before, and his voice wavered.

“Being a member of the Cadre will not be easy, Din. The path of peace is neither simple nor clear in most cases, and sometimes…” he swallowed, Adam’s-apple bobbing as he glanced at the floor. “Sometimes, I want you to know that it will not even exist.”

Din frowned, doubt and anxiety leaking together into the hollow of his stomach, making him feel hot and confused. Was his _dada_ saying that sometimes peace could not be kept?

“ _Dada_? What do you mean? I thought—I thought you and _amma_ were supposed to make peace and justice wherever you went.”

His father shook his head and dropped Din’s hands, leaving them cold and empty.

“No. The best we can ever do is _try_ to _keep_ it. Try to save those who cannot save themselves, try to be kind and brave when we are the only ones, _try_ to make peace when others are always eager to make war. But we will not always succeed.”

He nodded at Din’s red tunic and then pulled the hood up over his son’s head.

“Sometimes we will die for it, Din. Remember that. It is what you will learn above all else when you are inducted.”

Din felt the anxiety coil tighter inside of him as his father stood. This wasn’t what he had thought his father would say. He had thought his father would be proud, that he would explain all the things that he would be taught once he was recognized today—the diplomacy, the speechmaking, the way to govern and to serve. The way to spread peace...Not the fact that today might mean he would _die_ for peace.

He reached for his father’s hand suddenly and caught it.

“ _Dada_ , I—”

He stopped, tears filling his eyes in a sudden and inescapable rush of fear, made worse by the apprehension already in him.

His father gently removed Din’s hand from his own and smiled at the boy, though his eyes were still liquid and somber.

“You will be great in whatever you do and however you do it, Din. _Family_ —by blood or soul—must be kept close in times such as these, and I am beside you now. Your mother and I will not let you navigate these tasks alone. It will be _ok_ today—I promise.”

Din sniffed even as a single tear spilled from his eye and rolled down his cheek. But then he nodded, and his father turned without another word and left the room.

When Din quelled his fear and tears a few minutes later and cleared his face of the evidence, he left as well. His mother and father were waiting by the door, holding hands, watching the street and the sky as he had been not long before.

Din felt stronger than he had before, braver since his talk with his father and the tears—despite the sadness his father had seemed to carry. He trusted his _dada_. He and the other members of the Cadre, he knew, would explain what it meant that some of them died for peace. He would not be alone. 

As he passed the strangers on the way to the door, taking pains to avoid looking at them, the unknown woman suddenly spoke.

“Din,” she said, her creamy-pale skin seeming to carry more life than it had in recent days. Din hadn’t even known she knew his name. He paused and looked at her.

“What does your red tunic stand for, in your ceremony today?”

Din looked at his parents, whose faces were strangely grave as they gave him permission to reply to the odd question. Din cleared his throat, knowing this was something he could answer confidently, a way to spread awareness of what he was going to stand for from now on.

“Blood,” Din said simply, watching with a small amount of mischief as the woman’s eyebrows dipped in surprise. “Blood that was spilled for peace. It is a reminder that peace and justice and freedom can never come without the sacrifice of life. It is a reminder to keep peace and justice while we are still able to do so in body and spirit.”

_It does not mean_ , Din thought suddenly, thinking of the conversation with his father, _That I will have to die._

The woman and the man shared a glance when he finished, and Din was surprised to see tears glistening in both their eyes. He stepped closer to his parents and to the doorway, glancing between them, uncertain if, perhaps, he had made a mistake in his recitation. 

But the man and woman nodded after a second and reached across the table to clasp hands.

“Thank you, child,” the woman said. She offered him a watery half-smile and squeezed her companion’s hand.

“I wish you luck in preserving a bloodless freedom,” she whispered after a moment, dropping her eyes to the table.

Din did not have time to think for long on her strange statements. His parents were guiding him out the door, their hands soft on his back, their touch carrying with it a comfort that still did little to dispel the vicious dance of anxiety and unease that had begun anew in his gut.

_Something was wrong_ , he thought. _I’m missing something, but what is it?_

A moment later, the first explosion shattered the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! :)
> 
> So, I didn't mean to make this so long-and I really did want to get through this entire first memory in a single chapter-but I kind of got carried away? I had a lot of fun building something of a culture and, unfortunately, a stable home-life for Din. Plus, there's a lot of psychology that I *hope* I set up well enough for future chapters/memories here. What do y'all think? Did this seem Star Warsy, or was it really just the self-indulgent family fluff I'm thinking it was? XD Please let me know...I'd love to hear your thoughts, and I hope you enjoyed this regardless!
> 
> (Also, bonus points to anyone who takes a stab at what/who those two strangers were and why they were so weird...because why not? :D)
> 
> (Also again: you should totally look up the word 'cadre' because I had never heard of it before writing this, and it's an epic word with a cool meaning, so...)
> 
> The next part of this memory-the destruction of his village and Din's rescue--should actually be up by the end of the week (I did say I was going to give you the first memory, after all). There will be a whumpful little return to the Covert to check on present Din at the end as well, and then the third chapter *should* be shorter. I won't have to set too much up moving forward--these first two chapters are the groundwork for what's to follow. So, stay tuned...and thanks for reading!
> 
> ~Roanoke
> 
> (Exodus 20:12 Psalm 133:1)


	3. Holding On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first part of this chapter is the flashback of we get in Season 1 of Din's backstory.
> 
> At the end of the chapter, Din struggles to manage his worsening injuries and illness and to reconcile reality with the memories of his past.

Din and his parents froze at the sound, just for a second.

And in that second they were still, another _boom_ sent shockwaves zipping through the earth, through the soles of their feet, into their very bones. It was followed by an unmistakable barrage of blaster-fire. Din jumped at the second boom—even more than he had at the first one—and turned his head to face his mother, eyes and mouth wide.

“ _Amma_ —” he whispered.

When she looked down at him, he knew that this— _this_ —was what had been wrong with the day. There was something terrible in her eyes, something wrong, something that mirrored what Din felt and made it that much worse.

_She’s scared_. He _was scared._

“Take him,” Din’s father said suddenly, snapping all three of them back to reality and raising his voice above the firestorm going off somewhere within the heart of the village. His eyes, too, were wide with panic as he looked at his wife, as he gestured again at their son.

“Take him!”

Din’s mother sprang into action, then, even as a third boom shattered the air. She grabbed him by the hand and urged him forward, toward the west.

“Come, Din. Come!” she hissed. Din’s feet felt leaden, and his heart was beating so hard he could feel it bounce off his ribs with every beat, but he obeyed. He obeyed and stumbled after her as she broke into a run, leaving his father behind them.

Another explosion rocked the earth, and this time they could see a flash of light following it, a plume of bitter grey smoke and roiling flames that rose above the rows of houses on his left.

And he heard screaming. Din twisted around as people began flooding the street, staggering or sprinting away from the site of the explosions, their clothes torn and soot-streaked, their faces ashen and pale with fright.

“ _Dada!_ ” he screamed, searching for a familiar figure, knowing this was wrong, too. They should not be running away from him. He had tuned back—probably to help the guests in their home—but Din and his mother needed him _here_. “ _Dada!_ ”

His mother tightened her grip on Din’s hand, and when he glanced up at her, the adrenaline surging all the way to the tips of his fingers, there was such a fierce energy in her eyes that Din had no choice but to trust the she knew what she was doing.

“Keep going! He will come!” he dimly heard her shout—just as the first droid came into view.

It appeared on their right, following the river of people fleeing from the explosions. It was tall and dark and sleek, with a round hump instead of a neck or a proper set of shoulders. As he watched, desperately trying to keep stride with his much taller mother, the droid lifted an arm, took aim, and—

Din sucked in a breath and dipped his head as the blaster bolt erupted from its arm and leapt into the back of the nearest person. The man didn’t even have time to cry out before he crumpled and lay still, smoking. Din tripped as his eyes remained inextricably fixed on the sight, nearly bringing his mother down with him. More bolts followed as the pair somehow managed to regain their footing, and while some found their targets in living flesh, others smashed into buildings all around them, ripping chunks away, leaving scorched scars in place of smooth stone.

Din’s breath came fast and hard, and he pumped his legs harder, the adrenaline in his system rising in pulsing surges that robbed him of air and control, that spurred his feet forward again and again even though it hurt so _much_.

And then his father was there, right beside him. He was breathing hard, too, but he moved with a purpose neither Din nor his mother seemed to have. He scooped Din up as they rushed forward, and Din tightened instinctively around him. He buried his head in his father’s shoulder, gulping down great breaths of air that smelled like him, trying to ignore the screaming and the booms and the crackle of weapons.

The three of them careened through the streets, taking turns as they came, dodging people running right and left and forward and back. Din soon realized they were headed to the minor market square—it was one of the farthest places from where the explosions had originally come.

Din dared to look up at one point as he rocked with his father’s desperate movements, but he shut his eyes again almost immediately. There was smoke everywhere. A haze of choking dust stirred up by the people and the droids—whom he could see behind them, still firing into the crowds of people—lingered over everything. There were bodies littering the streets and clustering in the doorways of homes.

Bodies of neighbors.

Bodies of friends.

Din felt a solid lump gather in his throat and block out his precious air supply, the precursor of tears. Binh and Mai were out there. And his grand _amma_. His teachers. The other members of the Cadre.

_What was happening? Why were they being attacked?_

When Din’s father stumbled and almost went down for the second time, his breath heaving raggedly from his chest, he tightened his grip on Din once more.

“Hold on,” the man breathed in a voice that Din could barely hear above the roar of destruction. _Hold on._

Din tightened the grip he had with his arms and legs—using all the strength he could muster—and he felt his mother place a hand on his hand, as if she were reassuring herself that he was still there and still whole. Then, the three of them broke out into the main thoroughfare that snaked across the minor market square—where they were greeted with more chaos than they had seen yet.

Din did not look when they emerged into the relative open, where the once-clear sky was now packed with thick bundles of black smoke, where unknown ships rained down fire and destruction from above.

But he felt it.

He heard it.

People screamed—somewhere, too, there were the sounds of wailing, of children or perhaps infants crying. Regular explosions, deeper and harder than any thunder Din had ever heard, made the ground buck beneath their feet. Buildings belched waves of stinging rubble and dust as they surrendered to the blasts from every conceivable front. Everything smelled of fire and death and smoke—except Din’s father.

The boy clung to that familiar smell and the warmth of the man beneath him the entire time they ran, forcing himself to become oblivious to the people who fell all around him, to the droids who aimed with impassive precision, and to the disc-like ships that swooped overhead. He managed to shove the tears deep down, where they didn’t threaten his air supply anymore.

By the time they reached the cargo hatch his parents had been rushing to, he was in a daze.

Nothing made sense as his father swung him to the ground, his eyes wide, hair wild around the panicked lines of his face.

Everything was too bright and too loud as his mother crouched in front of him, her breath rushing out of her in uncontrollable hitches.

Nothing made sense as she leaned in and hugged him, wrapping him in her light smell and blocking all the noise and the pain and the fire out for the briefest of moments.

“ _I love you,_ ” she whispered, so close to his hear that he couldn’t miss it. He could feel her heartbeat surge against him even as he moved his arms up automatically and hugged her back.

But it all began to make a horrible kind of sense when his parents helped him into the hatch and he fell against the white crates inside—and his parents didn’t crawl down to join him.

It all began to become clear—to make the panic rise higher and higher, from his lungs to his throat—when they began to shut the door, when they gave him a final look.

They both still looked so scared, framed against the fighting outside, but now there was something steady and purposeful in their gaze. It was something he thought he had seen in their eyes before, in milder forms, when he had lied or done something against their wishes—

It was a question.

_A question about what?_

Din acted on impulse once more, not understanding. He reached out to his father, as he had done in the room of their house such a short time ago. The words to call his parents back to him were on his tongue because he wanted them back. Because he _needed_ them back.

But the words wouldn’t come.

_Why were they not hiding with him?_

_Why were they leaving?_

The doors to the hatch shut, then, leaving him in a darkness that felt heavier than anything Din had experienced before. He sat there, his own breath harsh in his ears, for what seemed like an eternity—though it was only a few seconds.

The final explosion Din would truly remember came as he was watching the sliver of light between the doors of the hatch, expecting at any moment to see his parents open it up and reach down to get him out. He flinched back against the crates as it rattled the entire compartment, made dust pour in through the crack of smoky light.

Again, the words to call his parents back welled up inside him, but his mouth had gone completely dry. Everything was wrong. This was wrong. The droids shouldn’t have been attacking—

Him and his parents and Binh and Mai hadn’t done anything—

_Why was this happening?_

Din’s breath froze in his throat as a shadow fell over the crack of light. He knew before the doors even swung open what it was—the mechanical clang and shuffle could only belong to one thing.

So, when the droid stood there over him, aiming its weapon down at the boy, he merely recoiled against the crates, screwed his eyes shut, prayed that his parents would come back for him even after he was gone—

But no pain or darkness followed the sharp retort of a blaster, and the light falling on Din’s closed eyes changed, became more pronounced. He opened his eyes, and it was not a droid he saw standing over him; it was an armored man.

Din stared up, half-expecting the man to shoot at him, too, but he didn’t. Instead, the warrior leaned over and extended his hand—just like Din had extended his to his father as the doors to the hatch were closing.

The armored man gestured urgently with his fingers for Din to _come_.

And, without thinking—his body acting on the instinct to take the hand that should be his father’s—Din stood up and wrapped his fingers around the coarse glove of his rescuer.

The man hoisted him out of the hatch, and Din was lifted into the battle-rent air of his village. There were more bodies lying around, more damage than even a few minutes before because of the last explosion, more dust and smoke and chaos—

_Where were his parents?_

But there were also many warriors just like the one that had rescued Din from the droid. They came down from the sky, closed in on the droids and blew them to pieces, defended the few groups of villagers who had somehow managed to stay alive this long.

Din watched them as they subdued the droids and stopped the slaughter that had seemed so hopeless only moments ago. The world in that moment rushed through his head in flashes of colors and sounds and smells that had little meaning except for relief—relief that the burning might be reaching an end, that his parents—

Din saw another armored warrior in front of him turn, look at the one who had saved him, and then nod with a gesture of his hand toward the sky.

The boy looked at his savior. He searched the unreadable helmet and ran his eyes over its marred surface, tried to find the eyes of the man underneath. And, though he didn’t find them, he did find that suddenly it didn’t matter who was under the helmet or why the man had rescued him.

Because Din was seeing his father crouched in front of him in their bedroom at home. He saw the slant of noon sunlight cascading in through the window in the house, could sense the presence of the mysterious guests in the kitchen. He heard his father’s voice, quiet and intense.

_Do you trust this?_

He nodded—whether just in his memory or in the present, he couldn’t say.

He just knew that he _did_ trust. That he had to. That everything was wrong except this trust. This trust was going to keep him live—his father would keep him alive.

He didn’t remember much after that. He could vaguely recall the way the ground had spun as the armored man had propelled himself into the air, soaring higher than Din had ever been before. He remembered the strange warmth of the metal pauldron beneath his skin, the way he had held on tighter and tighter the farther they got from the ground, stomach now churning in more than fear.

He remembered seeing just a glimpse of familiar red robes on the ground far below, not far from the hatch where Din had been hiding.

And he remembered hearing two words in his head over and over. They became a mantra as the only world Din had ever known dropped away and he and his savior broke through the smoke and into the clear sky beyond:

_Hold on._

* * *

**_[The Present]_ **

**Approximately 9 ABY.**

* * *

Din nearly had a panic attack when he cracked his eyes open.

He didn’t have his helmet on, and he had no clue where he was—only that it wasn’t the _Razor Crest_ , pretty much the only place he could have been free to remove his helmet without fear of an audience.

But after a few seconds in the grey gloom, seconds in which he managed to locate that particularly nasty oozing crack on the ceiling, he remembered that he was in the Covert. That he was safe. That while he still didn’t remember taking his helmet off again, it was alright that it was off.

He could breathe—

—except that he couldn’t breathe because his throat was so dry and painful and felt so unnaturally closed off.

Din forced himself into a rough excuse for a sitting position and tried to suck in a breath, with a result that sounded like a wheezing womp rat. He struggled for a few moments—his heart pushing blood through his veins at an increasingly dizzying rate—until, _finally,_ air squeezed its way into his lungs, and he was breathing again.

Granted, it still felt like he was swallowing sand with each breath, but there was some air in there, too.

“Kriff.”

He sat there for a solid minute, staring at the uneven surface of the walls around him, and let his blood-oxygen level slowly return to a reasonable threshold. When he was certain that he wouldn’t pass out if he tried to move, he turned his attention to the other thing he knew was—in some distant part of his brain—bothering him.

His leg.

It was impressively stiff, and he was fairly certain that part of it was due to the amount of dried blood caked into his pants and the bedsheets beneath his leg. The other part was likely due to his inactivity and—if he had his guess—a minor infection of some sort.

“ _Kriff_.”

Before he could second-guess his course of action in light of this recent discovery, Din grabbed his helmet and shoved it onto his head, wincing as it raked itself across several good-sized bruises on the back of his skull. Those were courtesy of the zabrak on Utapaua, he was sure.

The smuggler had been a brute alright.

Din swallowed another gritty breath of air and then summoned a surge of strength that lifted him to his feet quickly enough to give him a surprised pause. He swayed for a moment, clenched his jaw, closed his eyes against the nauseating roll of the stone underneath him.

When he opened them again, he was encouraged to find that he was still standing, even if his wounded leg was radiating dull throbs of pain to every possible nerve between his toes and his hips. He could do this. He _would_ do this, if only because he sorely needed a sip of water to clear his airway right now.

And, yes, if he wanted to truly recover, he probably needed to suffer through a few bites of food, too.

The thought of it made him want to collapse onto the bed all over again, and the only thing that kept him upright were the memories he had just relived in his mind—the memories he really had no right to revisit at this point in his life, he knew.

He hadn’t been a kid for a very long time, and certainly he hadn’t been a kid like the one in his memories for an even longer time. It had been stupid to reopen scars as thick as those.

Din took a step forward, lurching his entire body forward to counteract the stiff, uncooperative hunk of flesh that was supposed to be his wounded leg. Darkness pockmarked his vision, but he pushed through it, the sight of Aq Vetina suddenly swimming far, far below him.

He definitely had a fever.

He obviously wasn’t on Aq Vetina anymore.

Din took another step, and now he was right in front of the cloth over his alcove’s entrance. He reached a hand forward to close his fist around the material—

And then he was pitching forward, his wounded leg buckling at the knee at the same time his breath locked itself inside his lungs again. He tore the cloth from its clasps as he fell, and then all he saw through the visor of his helmet was a curious, tilted world. He saw stone, a helmeted foundling sprinting down the tunnel, sunlight pouring through one of the windows at the top of the tunnels—meaning it was at least past dawn.

But Din wasn’t really focused on any of those things for long.

He was remembering something else he had forgotten about the day he was rescued—

He hadn’t cried the night his parents died.

It was only after he had slept and woken up again, in a strange place surrounded by strange, armored warriors, that he had cried.

It wasn’t even because of the unfamiliarity, the fright, or the memory of seeing the bodies of his parents on the ground far below, either, Din recalled.

He had cried—as a child so long ago—because he had sat down at his rescuers’ camp and noticed that there was a jagged tear in the knee of his red tunic. He did not remember when or how it had been ripped, but there it was—wide and ugly and most likely unrepairable.

The cloth had been ripped, Din remembered as the darkness came again, and that was all it had taken for him to finish breaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter? So soon? WhAt??
> 
> Ahem. Thanks for stopping by and reading--I hope you enjoyed it (well, as much as you can considering the tragic content). Please let me know what you think and drop any suggestions you have for memories in the comments. I haven't decided what memory I'll do next--though I'm leaning toward his first true meeting with a person who will become his friend (*wink, wink*).
> 
> I'm really going for turning points in his life (major or subtle, really) that show the shift away from the mindset and beliefs he held as a child, as well as the growth into the beliefs of the Mandalorians whose creed he adopts. So...yeah. See you next time! Thanks again for reading and/or feedback! Stay safe and healthy out there in the world of COVID-19 and politics!
> 
> (Oh, and a quick note: I went back to the prologue and changed the parts where Paz called Din "Djarin" because, according to Din himself in the show, he hasn't actually heard his name since he was a child. Whoops. I've come up with a different name to use instead. ;)
> 
> ~Roanoke  
> (John 14:27)


	4. Foundling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Din is rescued from the destruction of his village, his rescuer takes him to his people's camp - out in the fields of Aq Vetina, where Din has never been before. There, he begins to learn who his rescuer is, and he is faced with the implications of a word he has never heard but for some reason can't help but hate: "foundling."

**Approximately 28 BBY.**

* * *

It was strange, Din thought, how foreign Aq Vetina was out here, so far away from his village and below the open mouth of a star-clad sky.

Because they were still _on_ Aq Vetina, even two nights after the attack, even after how long it had seemed to Din since his rescuer had whisked him away from the fighting.

A large, empty starship had been waiting to receive them, then, and Din’s fighter had settled his unresisting charge next to its bulk before going inside of the vessel himself—all without speaking a word. Din had hardly moved from that spot until the other armored fighters arrived at the ship, not more than an hour after he and his own rescuer did. Some of them had been eager to tend to minor injuries or to lay down their weapons to have a drink, but others appeared to be in genuinely good spirits despite the carnage they had just returned from.

Overall, there were perhaps ten warriors like the one who had rescued Din. In the cool of the night following the destruction, they had spread out across one of Aq Vetina’s scraggly meadows and made a minimalistic camp. It was here that Din first cried the morning after the attack, after he had fallen into a restless sleep plagued by fire and screams and enemies he could not see. It was here that he had slept nearly the entire day after the attack, too, bundled in a blanket one of the other warriors had wordlessly given him that first night.

On this night, however, the mood of the camp was decidedly less tense. There were three or four fires scattered merrily around the still, looming ship, all of them ringed by the bulky shadows of the armored figures. Their every action was amplified coolly across the flat, barren expanse of the fields.

Din huddled to one side of a fire that had been conspicuously devoid of anyone but himself since it was created, his hood and blanket pulled low over his eyes, shivers intermittently running their course through his every muscle. He wasn’t sure if they were from the tears that would rise so fiercely behind his eyes when he wasn’t actively fighting to keep them in check or if they were simply a result of the chilly air that crept past his red tunic. He only knew that they annoyed him and that he wanted to sleep, even though he had slept nearly the entire day already.

He stared past the fire, occasionally able to hear gusts of laughter that seemed sorely out of place in the isolated landscape that pressed against them in the dark. The warrior themselves, gathered around their little fires, seemed almost ghost-like with the way thin starlight and cavorting flames blended and brushed across their filthy armor—

“Hey, kid,” a gravelly voice said from his left, earning the speaker a spasmodic jerk of surprise from Din.

He knew who it was—he had already learned to recognize the voice of the warrior who had rescued him by listening to him speak with his comrades. But Din didn’t turn. He didn’t want to look at him for a reason that felt wrong even to himself. Shouldn’t he be more grateful to the man who had saved him from the droids and from death itself? If so, then why did he feel something entirely different—something that was stronger and more unfamiliar and more unstable?

“I brought you some food.”

The man sat heavily beside Din, close enough that Din curled into himself and bunched the fabric of his tunic tighter in his fists. The warm prickling in his eyes returned, and he pivoted his attention away from the intermittent darkness that lay beyond his fire to the fire itself.

The warrior sighed. A bowl was placed next to Din’s knee, and the warrior pushed himself away, farther from the child, giving him more room to breathe. Din still didn’t look. He fixed his gaze on the jumping sprays of red, orange, and yellow that made up his fire, trying not to think about how even the sparks that managed to make it pass the tongues of flame were extinguished once they left the halo of its heat.

“Just take your time, kid,” the warrior said after a moment. His voice was tight. “We can always heat it back up when you get hungry.”

Din swallowed. The vision of the flames melted into a blur of dynamic colors until he blinked again, pushing the tears over the edge of his eyes.

“But you probably need to know a little more about us, since you’re—since you’re kind of stuck with us for now, you know? So, I’m going to do the talking, and you just ask if you have any questions,” the man continued.

Din could feel the armored man’s gaze on his hood, but he still did not look up.

“We’re called Mandalorians, if that means anything. Those droids you saw? They were Separatist droids. Who knows why they wanted to attack a sleepy little village like yours—but then again, who knows why they do anything…”

The man seemed to lapse into thought, and Din half-believed he would remain still and quiet until he spoke again a few moments later.

“I’m Raanan, too, for the record. Raanan Koravellyic. But I have a feeling you might call me something other than that, later. I think that’s how these things go.”

There seemed to be something that was at least reminiscent of a smile in Raanan's voice despite the meaninglessness of the words to Din, so the boy turned his head just enough to see the man from around the edge of his hood. The Mandalorian still had his helmet on, and he was leaned back on both arms, feet extended toward the fire in front of him. There was a rough tear across one forearm that looked as if it went straight through the vambrace there and penetrated the flesh beneath. Din’s eyes fixated on that, and he thought of the man and the injured woman who had come to his house not long before—

He thought of the way his mother and father had so quickly moved to help the woman—

Something flared within Din, sharp like tears but much more familiar and much more welcome simply because it wasn’t actually tears.

“You’re hurt, sir,” Din said, uncurling enough to look carefully up at his elder. His voice was terribly small, but Raanan heard it anyway. The dark helmet turned toward him, then tilted down, to where Din’s gaze had been drawn.

“It seems to be that way, yeah,” Raanan said after a pause, his voice oddly tight. The helmet was trained on him once more.

“Do—do you need to bandage it?” Din asked.

Silence, broken only by the irregular crackles and pops of the fire, followed that sentence for a few seconds before Raanan let out another sigh. He leaned forward and folded himself into a cross-legged position that seemed to Din like it would be uncomfortable in all the armor he was wearing.

“Nah.”

Din allowed himself to relax even more, slowly stretching his legs out in front of him and feeling the way his back and knees strained as they eased out of the cramped position they had been in for so long. He kept his eyes on the tear, trying to figure out if the wound was bleeding, finding that the harder he tried to focus on this, the easier it was for the tears to stay clamped down inside of him, where they didn’t make him feel so out of control of himself.

“My father heals,” Din found himself saying. “I know a little bit about caring for wounds, sir. I could help you.”

Once again, the Mandalorian stared at him, as if he couldn’t quite understand what Din was saying and was trying his best to figure it out. Raanan glanced at the knots of other Mandalorians bunched in the distance, then back down at his arm. After another moment of silence that stretched on long enough to make Din squirm, he looked at the child he had rescued.

“Ok, kid. We’ll go to the ship, where I’ve got some supplies. You can, uh, show me how to do it there.”

Din nodded eagerly and jumped to his feet before reaching down to extend his hand to the seated Mandalorian. He felt lightheaded and shaky—probably due in part to the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything since the morning his village was attacked—but knowing that he could _do_ something, that he wouldn’t have to sit and wait any longer for slippery sleep to come for him, made any discomfort he felt unworthy of even the time it took to dwell on it.

And, again, it kept the tears to a minimum. Din was tired of crying; his eyes were swollen enough as it was, and the tears were doing nothing to help his situation.

“Get that soup, will you? We don’t wanna waste the stuff,” Raanan said after he very noticeably avoided using Din’s hand to lift help himself up—which Din tried not to let bother him—and stood completely. When Din complied, cradling the still-warm bowl of frothy soup in his arms, Raanan set off in the direction of the ship.

“You got a name I can use?” the Mandalorian asked after they had gone a few paces and had passed by a group of Raanan’s comrades. The shaded helmets turned ever so slightly to watch as the pair passed, their voices fading to a low and indistinguishable murmur.

Din forced himself to look everywhere but at the other Mandalorians and to become hyper-focused on keeping the overfull bowl from sloshing everywhere as he walked. But he didn’t hesitate to reply to Raanan’s question, even though something just behind his sternum seemed to shift painfully as he did so.

“I am Din Djarin.”

* * *

The ship was musty inside, and its lighting system was buttery yellow and erratic.

From the outside alone, the ship—which Raanan mentioned was affectionately dubbed the _Grinning Gungan_ —certainly looked as if it had seen better days. Its round, oval-like body was marred with soot and gashes and patches where it looked like panels had been blown away, revealing a patchwork of heavily insulated wires underneath. The landing gear rested unevenly on the ground, crumpled in on several fronts and twisted insecurely on others. The inside, however, was quite possibly worse.

The vessel, whatever it might have been once, was roomy and squat but didn’t seem as if it had been made for carrying passengers as much as equipment. The walls were lined with storage compartments rather than seating accommodations, and nearly every bit of the floor space was covered with grungy boxes, crates of unused weapons, or loose gear and armor. The only exception was the narrow path that had been cleared from the loading ramp to the cockpit, which occupied the narrower nose of the ship.

Din tried to be careful as he picked his way through the crowded area, wide eyes scanning the strewn equipment as he moved along, but he managed to trip over a sheath of cords that snaked across the floor anyway. He stumbled, and the contents of his soup-bowl lurched forward then back again, splattering both the floor and the front of Din’s tunic.

He froze.

“Let’s see…there might be some bandages somewhere in this mess,” Raanan called, his back turned to Din, oblivious to the warmth that was creeping across Din’s cheeks and the breathlessness that suddenly draped across him. The Mandalorian bent over a crate and began digging through it, muttering something under his breath about “untidy laserbrains.”

Din tried to figure out what he was supposed to do before Raanan turned back around. The soup was oozing under his collar now, making slimy swatches against his bare skin, and he grimaced. He finally turned and put the bowl down on a crate beside him and then tried to locate something he could use to wipe the liquid off himself and the floor. Not that the floor would really be any better off even if he managed to sop the stuff up.

Raanan let out a triumphant _aha_ and turned around just as Din reached for what appeared to be a grimed weapon-cleaning rag.

“Caraya’s soul,” Raanan exclaimed when he saw Din’s predicament. “Don’t tell me you threw up in here, kid!”

Unexpectedly to him and, presumably, to Raanan as well, Din giggled at the man’s obvious disgust with such an improbable idea. He immediately choked it back, however, when he remembered that he shouldn’t even be _smiling_. Not now. Maybe not ever again. It hadn’t even been two full days.

Guilt pooled in his belly.

“No, sir. I spilled my soup,” he said quietly.

Raanan visibly relaxed, and then he let out another sigh before walking towards Din and sliding onto a crate near the boy. In his hands he held a skinny roll of bandages and a waning vial of clear liquid.

“Good,” he said as Din began to scrub at the soup on his tunic. The man sounded relieved in a way that Din didn’t understand—and didn’t feel like questioning anyway.

After about thirty seconds of furious scrubbing, Din finally stopped and lowered the cloth to his side, his heartbeat racing, the tears returning as he realized that this soup—whatever was in it—was going to stain his tunic. He couldn’t get it out. He didn’t even know why he was still trying at this point.

Raanan cleared his throat, interrupting Din’s fluttering thoughts.

“I can try and find some more clothes. It’s not a problem, real—”

Din cut him off sharply.

“No!”

Raanan stopped, and Din hurried to correct himself. That was no way to talk to any adult, especially one who could kill a dozen droids in five minutes and who had rescued him from said droids not that long ago.

“I mean, no, please. Sir. I want to keep these.”

Once again, Raanan seemed to be at a loss as to what to do. Another awkward moment of strained eye contact ensued before, all at once, the Mandalorian came to life.

“Dank farrik!” he swore, and Din felt his eyes widen at the strong exclamation he had only ever heard his father use once, the day he had fallen from the roof and broken his wrist. “I don’t think I can do this.”

With that final statement, Raanan cast the bandages and vial aside and reached up to yank the helmet viciously off his head. He placed the piece of armor beside him and carded his fingers through salt-and-pepper curls, staring with fierce green eyes at the boy in front of him.

He was older than Din was expecting, and unkempt in the way his hair curled limply over his ears and in the way untamed stubble cast a deep shadow over his jaws and chin. He seemed to be a fair amount older than his own parents, but he was definitely younger than Din’s grand _amma_ —

Din shoved the mental images of his family down as best as he could the moment they surfaced.

Just thinking about them very nearly made Din whimper and step away from Raanan. He looked at Raanan again.

There was something entirely foreign to Din lurking in the Mandalorian's gaze. Something terribly different than his mother’s warm one or his father’s discerning one. It looked like the kind of wildness, Din thought, he had seen in feral dogs’ eyes when he stumbled across them raiding the trash in the village. He didn’t like that look. Feral dogs would bite without any warning at all.

“Listen up, Din,” Raanan said after the pause, leaning toward Din in a way that _did_ make Din step away from him. “’Cause I can’t keep pretending I’m some patient saint who saved an orphan and is now gonna be his devoted father.”

Din recoiled immediately, warmth flushing his skin once more. Orphan? Raanan as Din’s devoted father? _What?_

_Am I really an orphan now?_

Why would Raanan pretend to be his father? Din had a father already, and he was nothing like this warrior. His father was a member of the Cadre of Peace, he was kind and familiar and would hug Din to comfort him when he was hurting—

 _Dada_ _is gone—_

“That’s what they’ll expect me to do, you know,” Raanan continued, looking past Din now. “But I had a son. And he’s _dead_.”

The Mandalorian spat the last word out with such venom that Din jumped and took yet another step back, heart pattering against his ribs. What did Raanan mean? Why was he telling Din this? Who expected Raanan to become Din’s father anyway?

_Amma and dada_ _are gone—_

This time, his rescuer must have seen the way Din recoiled from him because he dropped his head against his chest, staring at the floor of the ship. He folded his gloved hands in the empty space between his knees, and Din saw that his chest was heaving with the same kind of intense breaths that were surging in and out of Din, too.

“I’m sorry. Truly, I am. Listen, when I saw your parents put you in that hatch—when I saw what the droids did after and what they were _going_ to do…I knew I had to save you. I never doubted that. I don’t now, either.”

Din swallowed, breaths coming faster and faster, his fingers tightening of their own accord around the limp cloth in his hand. He felt like he was running through the streets with his _amma_ again, stone, dust, and smoke raining down all around him. But that was stupid to think, wasn’t it?

Raanan’s eyes bored into Din’s.

“But we’re both going to have to learn how this all works, alright? Both of us. And I know it ain’t going to be easy, but we’ll do the best we can. Yeah?”

The Mandalorian stared at Din, scraggly eyebrows raised, but Din had heard everything the man had said through cotton. He was trembling visibly now, and he knew there were tears spilling from his eyes, but he managed to choke out a single word.

“What?”

“Sorry, but you’re a Mandalorian now, Din. That’s what I mean. What we call a _foundling_. And I’m…I’m going to be the one to take care of you and train you to fight.”

Din still didn’t understand. Him, _Din_ —a Mandalorian? Foundling? Raanan was going to teach him how to fight? He didn’t even know what the Mandalorians really _were_. This didn’t make sense. None of it did.

Not the strangers who were in his house—

Not the way the droids attacked and brought so much smoke and fire and destruction with them—

Not the way his mother and father were gone and not _here_ with _him_ —

Not the way Raanan was acting, what he was saying about being Din’s father—

None of it made sense, and Din hated it. He was angry and he hated it. He wanted home. He wanted to be with his _amma_ , to be sipping the warm, soothing tea that would calm him down so he would slip swiftly into sleep and be rested to play with Binh and Mai in the morning. He wanted to watch his father’s long strides as Din trailed behind him in the drooping sunlight, helping gather herbs that would be dried and used in tinctures and medicines for the people of his village.

He didn’t want to be _here_ and he didn’t want Raanan to train him to fight and he didn’t want anyone to act like the father or the mother that _he already had_.

“Kid? You good?”

Din’s eyes gaze snapped upwards, to where Raanan was staring at him rigidly, watching the tears that tracked down the little boy’s face and the way broken sobs struggled to pry their way from his form.

“Din?”

Din closed his eyes and then opened them again nearly as suddenly.

“I won’t fight,” he snapped.

_I can’t fight_. _I’m supposed to keep peace. I’m supposed to be with_ amma _and_ dada.

“And you aren’t my _dada_.”

_He’s at **home**_. _Where I should be, too._

Raanan pressed his lips tightly together and stood, grabbing his helmet as he did so. His eyes were hard and wild again as he nodded once, tersely, at Din.

“Right. Regardless, we leave at first light tomorrow. I’ve got a place I think I can take you, at least for a little bit.”

Raanan skirted around Din, his boots thumping hollowly against the metal as he left the ship. Din stared at the puddle of spilled soup on the floor as the man left, noting the way some of it had seeped through hairline cracks in its surface and was no doubt leaking onto wires below his feet.

He sniffed, wrapping his arms around himself, wanting to sit down but also wanting to wait until Raanan had completely left the ship until he did so. And yet Raanan paused before he made it completely out into the yawning blackness of the night.

Din listened closely as the man took a deep breath and then spoke, his voice dark, boiling just beneath the surface, hinting at more than Din could hope to understand.

“Just so we’re clear, I didn’t want to be your _dada_ in the first place. I’ve done my time already.”

And then he left.

Din stumbled to the nearest crate and slid against it, his vision completely overtaken by tears, pressure exploding in his chest, stifling every breath, straining every muscle he had.

The foundling cried until no tears would come and the hollow in his chest had expanded until it had consumed every last bit of energy he could have possibly possessed. He cried until his throat burned and his eyes felt as if they were swollen shut. Again.

He cried until he fell asleep, and then he dreamed.

But, oddly enough, he did not dream in the same dark colors he dreamed in the previous night, between fitful bouts of panicked wakefulness. This time, he dreamed of home.

He dreamed of warmth—

He dreamed of light—

He dreamed of his parents’ arms around him, their heartbeats in sync with his own, their breathing leveled with his—

The dream ended too soon, of course, but the ghost of their familiar embrace lingered still inside a part of Din as he woke the next morning, blinking sleep from his eyes, searching for something, _anything_ that was familiar in in the ship around them or in the unreadable helmets of the Mandalorians who now filled the humming space around him.

But even as he did so, he realized he was facing a world that knew him no longer as the son of the Djarins, but as a foundling of the Mandalorians.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter four, my lovely readers! Up in time for the season finale today (WHICH I HAVEN'T SEEN YET AHH)!
> 
> I feel kind of bad for all that Din has been through lately, but I promise this fic won't be all dark things. XD He's going to meet Paz in the next chapter (according to my Master Plot Guide for this story), so I hope y'all enjoy! Please let me know what you thought...and a HUGE thank you to everyone who has been so kind as to read, leave kudos, and/or review.
> 
> You guys are amazing and supportive and I love it. :)
> 
> In case I don't get another chapter up before Christmas, too, I wish every single one of you a Merry Christmas and happy new year (because 2020 was so S P E C I A L). Until next time! :D
> 
> ~Roanoke
> 
> "But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands; to you the helpless commits himself; you have been the helper of the fatherless."  
> Psalm 10:14


	5. Under Watchful Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After parting ways with Raanan's Mandalorian companions, Din and his rescuer travel ever farther away from Aq Vetina - from Din's home. As Raanan's plans for caring for Din become suddenly clear and Din gets more of a taste of what the Mandalorians are like as a people, he's not sure what to do. He feels like he's being sucked into something that's going to destroy everything he has left of himself - which doesn't feel like much at all. But maybe - just maybe - everything is not as it seems, and he's not entirely alone after all...

**Approximately 28 BBY.**

**( _Mando'a translations at end)_**

* * *

"You have your own ship?"

Raanan turned sharply at the sound of Din's voice as the Mandalorian vessel lifted off and vanished into orbit. The foundling hadn't spoken for the several hours it took for the Mandalorian ship to carry them far away from Aq Vetina, zooming straight into the star-studded heart of a darkness that Din could _feel_ stretching inside of him, expanding with every minute farther away his home, making him want to cry all over again even though there was no physical way he had any tears left inside his body.

Maybe Raanan saw the way Din's gaze leapt to the ground as soon as his helmet came into view, however, because he sighed and then waved an arm at the shiny winged bulk of his ship.

"That I do. The _Razor Crest_ — that's what she's called. Isn't she beautiful?"

Din raised his head doubtfully as they continued walking toward the vessel. Raanan clanked with every step as the heavy bag he carried whapped against his armor and Din walked empty-handed and too warm in the humid air of whatever planet this windswept bluff was a part of.

Raanan's ship sat proudly in a swath of waving green grass. She was tall, taller than the ship they had just disembarked from, but the cockpit was smaller and high up on her head. Two laser cannons protruded from either side of the cockpit, looking to Din like the whiskers of the fish that swam at the bottom of Aq Vetina's ponds. Her wings were short and high up on her body as well, and the large circular engines they supported loomed at a distance from the cockpit like two big, staring eyes.

In fact, Din thought as he cocked his head and peered at the ship head-on, the _Razor Crest_ almost seemed to have something of a face, a personality. That would be her nose, the two engines her eyes, and over there—

"You don't say a lot, do you?" Raanan said tiredly, and Din wrenched his attention away from the ship.

He didn't answer, though. What was he supposed to say to that? Was he supposed to explain that his words felt as if they had been lost somewhere inside of him, dried up with his tears—that his own voice sounded empty as it squeezed around the hollow that had grown in his chest? He didn't understand it, just like he didn't understand anything that was happening anymore. He also didn't want to talk to Raanan, and based on the Mandalorian's words the night before, Raanan wasn't very eager to speak with him either.

"Well, she _is_ beautiful, if you ask me. And made even better 'cause _I_ ' _m_ the one who built her."

Raanan paused, and Din watched as his helmet fell a little to one side.

"My son and me, that is."

Din didn't say anything to that either, and the next fifty feet or so to the _Razor_ Crest were completely silent except for the gentle _whoosh_ of wind down below them, the garbled cries of flying creature in the arcing blue expanse above them, and the sounds of their own footsteps _scritching_ softly against the earth.

When they reached the back of the _Razor Crest_ and were standing in the cool silver shadow of her wings, Raanan paused and tapped at something on his wrist. The landing ramp began lowering immediately with a chipper whine. Din took a few tentative steps inside when it finally fell against the ground.

It smelled a lot different than the other Mandalorians' vessel—cleaner, newer, less crowded with the inevitable stench of too many people living too close together for too much time. It was a lot less messy, too. Nothing was strewn across the floor and there were no random scorch marks marring the walls or streaking the floor or stains in places where there shouldn't be stains. While Din could see the outlines of several compartments set into the walls, which no doubt held all the odds-and-ends that were safely out of sight right now, the interior of the ship as a whole just seemed _clean_ in a way that Din found surprising.

"Believe it or not," Raanan said dryly, stopping inside the ship and turning to look at the hesitating Din. "I don't particularly like living like a Hutt in a hole. I hope you won't mind too much."

Din looked at Raanan, still unable to read him because of the helmet but getting the general impression that the man was trying to be funny. One corner of his mouth lifted into something that wasn't quite a proper smile but might have been the beginnings of at least a polite one.

"What's a Hutt?" Din asked quietly, finally taking a ginger step forward, into the ship that was foreign but not intimidating in the way the _Grinning Gungan_ had been.

Raanan just stared at him.

"I swear kids need to live a little more these days," he said after a moment, shaking his head and walking to where Din could now see a ladder bolted to the wall. He guessed it led to an upper level, since the ship seemed big enough to him to have at least another level—though maybe it led to the cockpit. He had never been on a ship before the _Grinning Gungan_ , so he still wasn't sure how everything worked.

_I'm not sure how_ _**anything** _ _works, apparently._

Raanan didn't say anything else as he dropped his bag to the floor and began to climb. Din jumped when the ramp started to close on its own, though, and he hesitated again before moving to climb the ladder himself.

The Mandalorian was already in the pilot's seat when Din's head poked into the cockpit. He was switching rows upon rows of buttons, pressing blinking buttons, making his ship whirr to life beneath his fingers. Din watched, mesmerized, until Raanan sighed and pulled his helmet off. The Mandalorian turned to look at Din, revealing a drawn, sour expression and unruly hair

"Take a seat."

Din complied, sliding into a seat that looked as smooth and unwrinkled as if it hadn't had anyone sit in it since it had been made. He watched and listened, hands folded in his lap, as Raanan continued coaxing the ship to life. He was so engrossed in the process that it wasn't until they were already lifting into the sky, coordinates programmed into the system, that he blinked and returned his attention to Raanan. The man was watching him again, a well-worn wrinkle between his eyebrows, light eyes searching Din's in a way that made him want to squirm in his seat once more.

The boy also noticed for the first time that Raanan had a thin pinkish scar across one cheekbone, curving nearly from the edge of his nose all the way to his ear. He shivered.

"Where are we going?" he asked hollowly, and once again his voice felt like it was being pulled from the heart of space, like it had never existed before this moment, when he had been forced to pull it from a void. It felt scratchy and _wrong_ and broken.

Raanan's expression never changed, but he did— _finally_ —look away from Din, back to the controls he had just wrapped his hands around.

"A place for people like us, if you'd believe it."

Din pulled his knees up into himself, making sure that he placed one hand across the tear in his pants so that he didn't have to see it.

_I am Din Djarin. I am not a Mandalorian. I am not like Raanan—and I never will be. He is not my father. He is not my—_

"I'm, uh, going to have to be away for a bit, you see. But these other Mandalorians, they're going to take good care of you until I'm back. They're a family all their own, basically," Raanan was saying, but Din's mind ground to a halt on his very first sentence.

_Raanan is going to leave me alone?_

_Did I make him so mad that he doesn't even want to deal with me anymore?_

_What if the other Mandalorians don't want_ _to take care of me either?_

And through all those dark, swirling questions, the tears were burning inside of him. They filled up the hollow where his voice came from, and then he was interrupting Raanan, his voice watery, his thoughts spiraling too fast for the words he spoke.

"You're going to leave me there?"

Raanan still didn't look away from the controls as he sent them into hyperspace, which—even though it was so beautiful and strange and made Din's chest pull again with the _largeness_ of it all—somehow wasn't enough to tear his gaze away from the Mandalorian who had saved him.

 _The Mandalorian who said he was supposed to be as my father_ —

_Even though I have one, and an amma, too—_

Raanan shifted and cleared his throat a second time. He glanced at Din and then back away again.

"Look, it's nothing personal, kid. I just have some business I need to attend to with some of my own group, the other Mandalorians who helped save your little town—"

"They didn't save _amma_ and _dada_ ," Din whispered before he knew he was even going to say anything.

Raanan did turn to face him fully, then, and Din flinched away from the sudden attention, pushing himself farther back into the seat. But Raanan didn't look angry. He just looked… _sad?_

"I know. And I wish we had, but we can't be thinking on that right now—there's too many other things we got to do. I _will_ come back for you. You just have to…" Raanan swallowed, and Din knew with a sinking feeling in his stomach what the man was going to say next. And he didn't want to hear it.

"You just have to trust me, kid. OK?"

Din didn't answer. His voice had left him again, and he couldn't stop the tears that leaked out of his eyes. They weren't sobs this time—sobs that tore him open and left him gasping for air—they were just tears. He closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat, not wanting to see Raanan, not wanting to see the colors that flashed outside the cockpit, not wanting to see how far they were traveling away from his home.

He felt sick to his stomach.

And tired again.

Alone, maybe.

And so, so _sad._

He felt Raanan watch him for a second more, and then the man stood up and walked past where Din sat.

"I'm going to the 'fresher for a bit, yeah? Just sit tight. Don't mess with anything or…just don't move."

Din listened until the Mandalorian's footsteps faded away completely, and then he pulled his hood over his eyes, curled up tighter in the seat, and tried to remember home.

He had done this in the ship on the way here—tried to remember every face, every building, every sound, and every smell he knew from Aq Vetina. And while doing so never failed to make the tears prick at his eyes again, it also made him feel less like he was drowning in the tears. It made him feel like part of him—even if it was a small part—was actually _there_ , there before the droids came and the fire burned the buildings and he was in the hatch and his parents—

Right now, it made him feel like he wasn't being left all alone again, this time by someone he hadn't even known he didn't want to be left by.

* * *

It was much colder on the planet Raanan was going to leave Din upon than on Aq Vetina.

But the light of a massive white sun in the pale sky made everything look bare and open, like there was nothing on this planet that could possibly keep secrets. There was a meandering dirt path that led from the landing site the _Razor Crest_ had touched down upon, which was really just a wide, fire-scarred clearing on one of the many rolling hills the planet seemed to offer. Raanan set off down the thin path as soon as he exited the _Razor Crest_.

Din carried the worn bag Raanan had given him upon their arrival, a little more than an hour after they'd picked the _Razor_ Crest up. Now, he followed behind the Mandalorian, who had replaced his helmet when they landed and was mercifully silent as they walked.

Until he wasn't.

"You ever seen the likes of those flowers, Din?" the man asked suddenly. He made a humming sound in the back of his throat and paused to dip his head toward a cluster of neon pink flowers waving amongst the thin covering of pallid grass around the trail. Din glanced at the flowers but didn't reply.

He smelled smoke on the wind, drifting up from their destination, and that captured his attention far more than any of the local flora.

He didn't know if Raanan smelled it, and while part of him itched to ask—just to make sure nothing had happened to the Mandalorian community that shouldn't have happened—most of him just wanted to go back to the _Razor Crest_ and do anything else but walk to yet another place he didn't know filled with people he'd never met. At least it was warmer in the ship, and there were far less unknowns to be found within the cockpit than beyond this next hill.

"I 'spose not, then," Raanan said, and this time Din could pick up on a rumbling tightness in his voice.

"There are some things you need to know if you're going to be here for a bit, though. So, since you obviously haven't been listening, I'd perk your ears up now."

Raanan paused again to look back at Din, and the boy nodded in acknowledgement. His rescuer continued with another hum. A hum that sounded a little big more like a warning than anything else.

"These Mandalorians are a tad different from me and the others you met on the _Gungan_ ," he said. "They've got some different ideas about what us Mandos should do with our lives. And our history."

Din frowned and drew his eyebrows together.

He didn't know anything useful about Mandalorians as it was. Why did Raanan think it would matter if this group was different than the last one? Neither group was his family—they never would be—and where he went now didn't matter to him. It would still be somewhere away from home. Away from _amma_ and _dada_.

As if he could hear Din's thoughts, Raanan added something else as they neared the crest of the particularly steep hill they had been ascending.

"I know that probably doesn't mean a thing to you, but if I were you—for your own sake, probably—I'd keep any details you might think you know of me on the down-low, alright? Particularly when it comes to my helmet habits."

Din's frown deepened, and he stared at the back of Raanan's head warily.

Now, what was _that_ supposed to mean?

But he didn't have time to dwell on it for very long because they reached the top of the hill, and there it was—the Mandalorian community Raanan was going to leave him at. It was also the source of the smoky smell Din had sensed as soon as they had left the _Razor Crest_ because from nearly every house clustered between the rolling hills, there curled a thick bundle of dark smoke. It was smoke, Din thought, that looked as if it would come from a mechanic's shop on Aq Vetina.

Din paused to look closer at the little swath of land sloping below them.

It was definitely a smaller community than the one Din had lived on in Aq Vetina, with less and smaller houses and only one street, it seemed, curving between them. Even from a distance, too, he could tell the structures were built more crudely, and there were wide tracts of land all around the houses that were open except for black dots and smears—some obviously moving people, some obviously not.

He couldn't tell what they were exactly, but as Raanan continued moving forward, leaving him gawking, Din guessed he was going to find out sooner than he'd like.

* * *

There were children in this community, Din realized with surprise.

For some reason, the presence of children had been one of the farthest things from his mind when he thought of a community built just for Mandalorians to live in.

And these children wore helmets just like every single one of the adult Mandalorians he caught a few glimpses of, moving inside of houses, moving along the street, cleaning weapons or working on pieces of old, worn-out machines—for one Mandalorian—even a droid.

 _Droids_.

Din averted his eyes sharply at the sight of the droid and moved deeper into the concealing darkness of Raanan's shadow, refusing to look any longer at the empty sockets of the droid head cradled between the Mandalorian's knees.

But Raanan stopped suddenly, his helmet swiveling from left to right, muttering something Din couldn't quite catch even as the boy rammed into his back. Raanan jerked around, and Din stumbled back, eyes wide.

"Watch it, kid," Raanan growled, but he didn't look long at Din. He was still searching for something.

He found it a second later, though, and let out a relieved sigh.

"There we are. They said it'd look something like a shriek-hawk," Raanan mumbled. "Looks more like a bloody wound if you ask me."

This said, Raanan strode confidently down the center of the street, straight towards a building that was off to the right of the dirt path—which Din now saw extended beyond all the houses and even the fields around the houses and over the next sloping hill. The house had a large banner raised beside it. It was a dark banner with a single emblem emblazoned in red on the front, an emblem that _did_ look kind of like a bleeding wound, Din thought.

That was a disturbing thought, but Din supposed it _did_ seem to fit what he knew of the Mandalorians so far.

But some of the Mandalorians apparently thought _they_ didn't fit because all at once Din became aware that they were watching Raanan and his charge as they strode toward the building. There were only two or three—all adults, all with weapons strapped across their backs or at their hips—but the blankness of their helmets and the scars that adorned their armor was enough to make Din think that it didn't really matter how many Mandalorians thought they didn't belong here.

It would probably only take one to wipe him out in a heartbeat, and Raanan—scrawny as he seemed to be next to the Mandalorians who watched them—would no doubt be next. Maybe that's why all the Mandalorians kept their helmets on even when they were home. They were ready to fight at a moment's notice.

Suddenly, they were there, and Raanan whirled around.

"Ok. I'm going to go talk to the boss of this place about you, alright? Stay here and I'll be out in a second. Don't…wander off or anything. They're not gonna touch you."

Without bothering to see how this sat with Din— _it didn't sit well at all_ —he turned and pushed open the simple wooden door, which rasped against the floor as it slid inwards, and then he closed it. Leaving Din by himself. Leaving Din alone.

He stood there for a moment, his heartbeat suddenly swift inside his chest, warming him up even though seconds ago he had been cold in this planet's thin air. When it became obvious that Raanan was going to retrieve him anytime soon, Din turned around slowly, not wanting to see any more droids or any more staring Mandalorians—or _anything_ that was unfamiliar or smelled like smoke or whispered of barely concealed violence.

Fortunately, the Mandalorians' gazes seemed to have been drawn elsewhere, and it was just him standing on the path, staring at the rows of dark houses and the fields in between, which he could now see were dotted with practice targets, weapon racks, and even armor, stacked in neat piles beside the houses, ready for use.

Curious despite himself, Din started to take a step forward, to inspect the fields that looked to be well-used, if the charred streaks in the grass or the furrows in the earth were any indication, when everything exploded.

_Droids! Raanan!_

Something hard and sharp hit him from behind, sending a jolt of pain through the length of his spine. He was jarred forward, landing on his stomach and wrists with an impact that knocked the breath from his lungs and sent further stabs of pain through his wrists.

He tasted dirt in his mouth—

There was just brown in his vision, panic growing in his lungs, shakiness in his bloodstream—

"Get up."

It was a command, spoken in a low but not necessarily mature voice, that drifted from the direction of the blow he had just received. Din breathed sharply into the dust that tickled his nose, feeling too stunned to push himself up, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain and the shock.

"I said, _get up_!"

Two hands grabbed him roughly around the shoulders and flipped Din onto his throbbing back. Still gasping, Din slowly unscrewed his eyes to find himself staring directly at the dented helmet of a Mandalorian—who was easily twice his size and height but who was still obviously a _kid_. Like _him_.

And then the kid jumped onto Din's chest with a grunt, straddling his body and squeezing what feeble remnants of his breath had been left behind by the first attack between his knees. Din felt his eyes widen, his heartrate spike again, panic claw into his throat—

That was all _before_ the kid raised the sturdy wooden rod he held in his hands—presumably the one he had struck Din with—and pointed its end at Din's face, prepared to strike.

"Give me one reason not to hit you again, _chakaar_ ," the kid growled.

Din knew that he didn't want to die—he didn't want to die, not yet, not now, not _ever_. This wasn't _right_. So, he didn't think. He didn't have time.

He just arched his back with all the energy he could muster and shoved his hands up at the same time, aiming to knock the rod to the side.

His hands did collide with the weapon—jamming at least one of his fingers—but the size disparity between him and his assailant was so great that arching his back did practically nothing, and the Mandalorian child sitting on top of him merely tightened his grip around Din and let out an unmistakable titter of laughter.

The rod raised again—

Din's eyes flushed with tears as he screwed them shut and his heart exploded with fear—

_I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—_

And then the weight left his chest and stomach, allowing sweet air to rush back into Din's aching chest. He was free. Din's eyes snapped open, and to his astonishment, the kid who had just attacked him was standing directly above him, one hand extended as if to help him up.

Din blinked, his heart still hammering his ribs, still blinking the blurriness of warm tears out of his vision.

"Welcome to the Tribe, foundling," his attacker said, wiggling his fingers slightly. Din could have sworn he heard a _smile_ in the Mandalorian's voice. "I'm Paz Vizsla. Nice to meet you."

Wordlessly, still staring at the dark T-visor of Paz's helmet, Din took the offered hand. He didn't know what else to do. He winced at the iron in Paz's grip as he pulled the one he had just attacked to his feet, and he blinked still more, harder, his mouth slightly open, as Paz patted away the dust from his robes and then stepped back.

"Sorry about the rough greeting, _burc'ya_. I had to know what you were made of, whether or not you were going to be a runner or a crier or a screamer." The smile returned to the Mandalorian's voice, which sounded much more youthful now that the forced gruffness was gone. "Turns out you're neither, are you? You're a fighter."

With that, Paz clapped a heavy hand on Din's shoulder, and the boy could guess just by his tone and posture that he was grinning jovially down at him under his helmet. He stared, feeling shakier than ever before now, so shaky that he had to sit down, that the whole world was spinning now, making little swirls in his vision.

"Whoa, now, _burc'ya!_!" Paz exclaimed, apparently seeing the fading expression on Din's face. He took Din's arm and guided him to an old, scarred tree stump at the corner of the house Raanan had disappeared into. Din slumped into a sitting position on top of it, breathing hard.

"It's just, you're the first foundling we've had here in a long time. My _buir_ thought it would be a good idea to greet you properly. Like a Mandalorian," Paz said after a moment, towering somewhat uncertainly above Din, who found it hard to focus on much else besides controlling his breathing so he didn't pass out from the shakiness.

And then an idea came to him in a rush that sounded so inexplicably attractive that he temporarily forgot about what had happened, realized he didn't care very much that his voice was barely stronger than a whisper.

"Are…are you a foundling?"

Paz let out a snort, whether from amusement or scorn, Din couldn't tell.

"Nope! Clan-born," Paz replied, and the raw pride in his tone was palpable. "You an orphan?"

Din felt the sudden hope that had been him—the hope that maybe he wasn't the only one in this situation, that maybe he wouldn't be the only one his age who didn't know anything about what was going on—dissipate.

And there was that word again. _Orphan_.

The tears prickled at his vision, and he sniffed, wiped them away with the back of his hand.

"My…parents can't watch over me anymore," he said quietly, answering even though he knew he really didn't have to. Answering because he had to make sure Paz understood that, that—

He glanced back up at Paz, defying the threatening tears and willing him to deny that the word the Mandalorian had just used— _orphan_ —didn't apply to him. Paz stared back, hands on his hips.

"Ok. Well, anyway. You look to be about my age, and don't worry—you're a foundling now, but we'll be Creed brothers before long. Just watch. I'll teach you all you need to know about _that_."

Din looked up again, at this loud boy with his tarnished helmet and his padded, ragged clothing. He looked at him and thought about what he'd said—about what Raanan and, apparently, every other Mandalorian—thought he was and needed to be. And he was angry. Angry that no one understood that he wasn't a _fighter_ —he was a keeper of the peace. That he didn't want new parents or a new family—he wanted the family he already _had_.

"Leave me alone," Din mumbled, lowering his eyes to the ground, to the end of Paz's stick brushing the dirt. "Please just _leave me alone_."

There was silence for a moment, and Din almost thought Paz would attack him again, but he didn't. He just answered him in the same cheerful tone he had used before.

"Alright. I'll see you later tonight after dinner, foundling. You'll like following the Way, like all of us, I promise."

And with that, Paz sprinted off, leaving Din with a throbbing back, a whirling head, and so many words that just didn't make sense. He was so overwhelmed, in fact, that when Raanan emerged from the house a few minutes later and paused uncertainly in front of Din, whose head was bowed into his own hands, Din was actually relieved.

"Come on, kid," he said in a surprisingly gentle tone. "They gave us a place to stay tonight."

And so Din rose again to his feet, still trembling, and followed his rescuer once more.

* * *

_**Mando'a Translations:** _

_chakaar:_ corpse robber; thief; petty criminal; general insulting and abusive name

 _burc'ya:_ friend

 _buir:_ father/mother/parent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!
> 
> Happy New Year, my dear readers. May your 2021 be filled with...anything better than the bulk of 2020, really. XD
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter to kick off the new year. Confession: I kind of got carried away with writing AGAIN, ignoring my Master Plot Guide in the process, and technically have the next 2 or 3 chapters well on their way to being finished. The chapter after this one will be more about Paz - more about him actually befriending Din and not just...well, you know - and then the one after THAT will be a pretty lengthy check-up on Din back in the present (with another appearance with Paz ;) Expect whump and some conflicting feels if I did my job right. :P
> 
> Please let me know what you think, but even if you don't, thanks so much for reading! You are all so awesome, guys. You really are. ;D
> 
> ~Roanoke
> 
> "I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people."  
> Ephesians 1:18


	6. Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Din and Raanan are "settled" into the Mandalorian community for the night, Din grows increasingly uneasy - and he still can't figure Raanan out. Paz showing up again doesn't help matters very much.

**Approximately 28 BBY.**

* * *

"I guess warm broth is as good as you can get when you're wearin' a helmet every day, huh?"

Raanan chuckled to himself and—helmetless behind the closed door—tipped his bowl of broth into his mouth. Din did not react.

After greeting Din and his rescuer in front of the house Raanan had disappeared into before Paz attacked—the house Din know knew was called the _Vizsla_ House, like Paz's last name—an adult Mandalorian had showed them to an empty hut at the far end of the community. He had then urged Raanan out of Din's earshot and held yet another lengthy discussion with him, leaving Din alone with all his unanswered questions. By the time the pair of warriors had finished talking, Din was dozing despite himself and the sun was going down. Thankfully, however, no other Mandalorian had attacked him.

He'd barely even seen any other Mandalorians, actually.

Not long after Raanan and Din had dropped their belongings off in the house and wordlessly prepared to seek out dinner, the same Mandalorian had returned and given both Raanan and Din a bowl of soup, explaining that Din would be properly introduced and shown around in the morning, after both he and his " _buir"_ —per the word the Mandalorian had used in clear reference to Raanan—had settled in and rested.

Raanan had accepted his dinner with enthusiasm and immediately begun eating. Din, however, left his bowl untouched beside one foot, remembering his most recent experience with soup and finding that his appetite had yet to reappear. He was shaky and weak, aching some because of his encounter with Paz. Nothing sounded palatable, though he did accept a clay mug of water that Raanan offered him.

Their little hut was spartan and dark—made darker by the swift, bloodless sunrise—with its only potential source of illumination being an ash-flooded fireplace in the corner opposite Din. The floor was made of a dark, brittle wood, but it was so dusty that it might as well have been made of dirt. There was no furniture to speak of either, so Raanan sat on his bag while he ate. Din didn't know what was in his own bag—whether or not it was breakable or valuable or anything else—so he had opted to sit on the floor just to be safe.

Raanan had yet to say anything about lighting a fire, too, seeming to prefer eating and moving about in the darkness. And Din wasn't about to suggest they make a fire despite how cold it was. So, the two of them sat together in the fading light, Din listening to his rescuer slurp up the last drops of his soup. He vainly scanned the rough wooden walls for anything that could distract him from the traitorous rumbling in his stomach and the questions that filled his mind.

"You're gonna eat, right, kid?"

Din didn't look away from an ugly knot he had just discovered just to the right of the door.

"I'm not hungry."

He heard rustling following his whispered statement, and then he swallowed as he realized that Raanan was coming closer to him, no doubt to see him more clearly through the gloom. The Mandalorian paused, hands on his hips, above Din. His figure was a few shades darker than the rest of the hut's interior, an irregular column of armor and uncertainty looming over his charge.

Din thought of his parents, how they had been standing over him in a similar way when he was in the hatch, and then the droid after that—

And then shadowed Raanan, a warrior without a face or a name or a reason for rescuing him.

Din looked up at Raanan. He was just able to make out a neutral expression painted across the man's face, his mouth set in a straight, flat line. When Din made eye contact with him, the man raised an eyebrow.

"You have to eat, Din. It's been what? Days now? I probably should have made you do this earlier, come to think of it."

"I haven't been hungry."

Raanan sighed.

"I know that, and I don't blame you. But you ain't doing your parents any favors by starving yourself, are you?"

Din curled his hands into fists and looked away, tears pricking the corners of his eyes.

 _This isn't fair_. _I just don't feel like eating._

And then, more clearly in his head—

_Don't talk about amma and dada like that._

"Eat. I mean it."

Din didn't reply, just turned his head toward the wall.

"Fine. You don't eat, then I'm going to have to feed you. And I don't think either one of us want to do that, do we?"

Raanan let his words sink in, and when he was apparently satisfied that Din had heard and understood that he would absolutely carry out his threat if need be, he returned to his respective corner of the hut so he could begin stripping off the rest of his armor.

Din reluctantly lifted the bowl to his face as he watched Raanan attempt to stuff his inflexible armor into the relatively small bag. He took a moment to inhale the weak, meaty aroma that drifted from its surface in thin wisps, swallowed dryly, and then took a tiny sip of the broth. And then another, bigger this time—and another.

He really _hadn't_ eaten in days, and now he couldn't seem to gulp the broth down fast enough. It was so good, and he was so _hungry_ —why had he not decided to eat until now?

_Would this be what my parents want?_

Halfway through the now too-small bowl, the air erupted with the jarring sounds of somebody pounding on the door from the outside, rattling it precariously on frail hinges. Raanan swore, and Din watched from over the rim of his bowl as the Mandalorian snatched his helmet from the floor and hastily pulled it on.

And he did so not a moment too soon because the door swung open not a full second after it cleared Raanan's chin. Din blinked and lowered his bowl when he saw that it was Paz—still in his helmet but looking significantly less intimidating in the failing light, standing before the aggressive shadow of Raanan. The Mandalorian child, stiff and straight, thrust a stack of something toward Raanan.

"Death Watch and the House of Vizsla formally extend their hospitality to you and your foundling, Mandalorian."

Raanan stared down at Paz then glanced back at Din still staring openly at Paz. The adult Mandalorian sighed and accepted the offered gifts.

"What's in the satchel?"

"Soap," Paz replied, the rigid edges of his voice that had made him seem like some formal messenger not a moment earlier now conspicuously absent. Raanan nodded.

"Alright, uh, well…thanks, then."

Paz stared at Din in the corner—or at least Din _thought_ he did—and then he cocked his head at Raanan.

"This is the Way," the boy said, voice solemn again. Raanan shifted uncomfortably, then cleared his throat.

"This is the Way."

Paz turned and vanished back into the dark, and Raanan closed the door quickly after him. Din watched silently as the man muttered something to himself and unfolded the clothes—underclothes, a shirt, and a pair of pants for the both of them—and held them up in the dark. After a moment of squinting at them, Raanan spoke again.

"It was a nice thought, at least. I don't know how they expect us to bathe in the dark, though, so I'll skip the shower."

He tossed Din's clothes to him.

"At least change. Maybe you can clean up properly in the morning." Din heard the man yawn, though the darkness had deepened by now to the point that it was difficult to make out anything but the general lines of what was in the room. "I'm ready to sleep. Hyper-lag is real—and I don't think you ever get completely used to it. You feeling it yet, kid?"

But Din neither knew what he was talking about nor particularly cared, and Raanan sounded like he was talking to himself more than to Din anyway.

The boy felt uncomfortably full after chugging his soup, and now that he wasn't fighting off the hunger pangs, he couldn't help but wonder what separated Raanan from these other Mandalorians. It seemed obvious that the ones here—ones like Paz and maybe the ones who were a part of whatever groups Paz had named at the door—didn't remove their helmets, at least very often.

But why did it matter?

And why _wasn't_ Raanan the same as these other Mandalorians?

Why would Raanan leave him with these Mandalorians if he didn't wasn't really like them—maybe didn't even really trust them?

But, again, Din held his silence; Raanan had still rescued him. That was something. And his parents, they—

Din let a black tide of something like guilt—stronger by far than any he had ever felt when he had disobeyed the wishes of his parents—fill him up and make his stomach roil with nausea again. As Raanan spread out two blankets for them to sleep on—one on either side of the room, pressed against the wall—Din breathed and watched and waited.

He waited until the questions faded back into the hole that had seemed to swallow his voice and consume all thoughts but those of his parents and his home, and then he too prepared to sleep.

Not more than a few hours later, while Din hovered unwillingly between an uneasy sleep and an even more uneasy wakefulness, Raanan packed his things and left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sorry, guys! I know I promised you a bit of a break for this next chapter - but don't worry, I'm posting that part tonight as well! The chapter as a whole, thanks to my COMPLETE INABILITY to follow my beloved Master Plot Guide, turned out to be, like, close to 7000 words, and I did NOT want to force such a monstrosity on y'all. There's only so much of this stuff you can take at one time without keeling over. Believe me, I know. ;P
> 
> SO, I posted this angsty little tidbit as a bridge to set up the next chapter, which is still long but which has a whole lot more HOPE and FRIENDSHIP and *HAPPIER* themes to explore. Please enjoy...and thanks for stopping by and doing whatever you're doing!
> 
> OK. See you in a sec. :)
> 
> ~Roanoke
> 
> "I would have despaired unless I had believed I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord."
> 
> -Psalm 27:13 - 14


	7. A Voice Through the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Din is alone in the dark. He can't sleep and he doesn't even know if he can cry anymore; too many things have happened in too short an amount of time. But when someone unexpected shows up at his and Raanan's hut bearing strange gifts and words he's not sure he even wants to understand, he begins to realize that maybe things aren't as dark as they seem - that maybe there is a light to be found in the chaos after all.
> 
> And maybe, just maybe, his own voice didn't fade completely into the darkness when he was forced to leave his parents behind.
> 
> *DISCLAIMER*: I do NOT know how flamethrowers work. But it's Star Wars, so we're gonna go with it. O_O

**Approximately 28 BBY.**

_**(Mando'a translations at end)** _

* * *

Din was aware when Raanan rose silently from the pair of blankets he had sandwiched himself between. He was awake, staring at the wall he faced, as the Mandalorian packed his belongings back into his bag, muttering again to himself under his breath.

And he was aware when Raanan paused for a long, heavy moment in front of the door he had creaked softly open. He could feel the Mandalorian looking at his bundled form on the floor, maybe doubting his choice to leave, maybe wondering whether or not he should stay after all—

But then he was gone, the door closed, and Din was alone _again_. The little head of hope that had reared itself inside his chest fell again.

He didn't cry after he was fully gone, though. He just breathed in sharply through his nose and then let each breath rustle back out again through his mouth. He thought of home again, of how his _amma_ and _dada_ always made sure to tell him goodnight no matter how late it was or how long he had been asleep when they returned from a meeting in the town.

And he wished that they could be back with him now, to tell him goodnight, to explain what was going on and why they couldn't be here, too.

Everything was too unfamiliar and too dark in this place. He couldn't sleep, he was still hungry, and he had a strange anxious flutter in his chest that seemed to say that tonight wasn't over, that something had yet to happen that _should_ have happened.

_Besides Raanan staying at least until the morning—_

It was an expectation that made his skin crawl.

And so, with that sense of apprehension, he wasn't as surprised as he might have been when the door slammed open, thudding against the wall with a loud _whack_ in the dark. Din jumped— _Raanan?!—_ and pushed himself defensively against the wall, straining his eyes to see who or what had decided to make such a dramatic entrance. A massive half-moon and a myriad pinpoints of starlight outside—brighter than on Aq Vetina and twinkling with the same kind of pale light as this planet's sun—helped illuminate the figure in the doorway some—

It was large, bulky, not like a person at all—

It was—

_A bed?_

"Hey, foundling, help me get this thing through the door," a clear voice commanded from behind the bedframe, which was now shoved halfway across the threshold. Din startled once more as the bed shuddered forward, its sides raking with a splintering crack against the edges of the doorway.

Din jumped to his feet before he could think too hard about it, and he and Paz—whose voice there was no mistaking after their earlier encounter—spent the next ten minutes wrestling the crude bedframe and its crinkling hay-stuffed mattress into the hut.

When it was finally all the way through—chips of wood from the doorway scattered around the threshold, the bed occupying a surprisingly large amount of space even though it had been turned on its side—Din looked over at Paz, who wore only a helmet and a pair of trousers and was heaving for breath just as much as Din was.

"Paz?" he breathed.

"Yeah. Shocking, I know," the Mandalorian replied dryly, bending over his knees, panting into the dust beneath his feet.

"I told you I'd see you again after dinner. And since your _buir_ ," Paz continued, spitting that word Din didn't know somewhat contemptuously, "Decided to leave in the middle of night, I figured I might as well come to keep you company."

Din frowned and drew away from Paz impulsively. He wanted to ask how, exactly, Paz knew that Raanan had left—

What that word, _buir_ , meant—

Why it mattered if Din was alone here—

If Paz knew where Raanan was going and why he was different from the other Mandalorians here—

But instead he said,

"Did you drag this bed across the entire town?"

His question was met first with a frozen pause, and then Paz let out a sharp huff of breath. The boy crossed his arms and stared Din down with an unspoken conviction.

"Yeah. What else did you expect me to do? Sleep on the dirt floor? If I'm going to come keep you company, I'm going to do it _comfortably_."

Din blinked.

There was logic in that, he supposed.

Paz clapped his hands suddenly and sharply, causing Din to jump again.

"Alright. I'm going to get a fire going—it's dark as kriffing Malachor in here—and you tip that bed over and push it against the wall."

Paz turned around and exited the hut after his pronouncement, leaving Din staring after him in a sort of daze. Approximately one-half of his brain was devoted to confusion over what was happening—and why this strange warrior peer of his was going out of his way to ensure he wasn't alone tonight—and the other half was completely blindsided by the fact that Paz had said 'kriffing.' Now, _that_ was a word he had never, ever heard his _dada_ say, much less someone his age.

Only the merchants who occasionally passed Din's village on Aq Vetina had ever used that word, and even then they used it sparingly.

But Din shook his head and obeyed Paz's orders anyway, choosing to ignore both sides of his brain in favor of doing anything but waiting dumbly for the answers to his many questions to arrive. And pushing a bed against a wall _was_ something to do. It wasn't as if he had been sleeping anyway.

With the way things were going tonight, maybe Paz would end up answering some of his questions anyway.

* * *

Paz made quick work of the fire.

In mere minutes, the entire hut was warm and glowing, flames dancing in between the shadows he and Paz cast as they sat before the indention that had once held only ashes. It smelled even more strongly of smoke now, but Din found that the warmth and the light the fire provided more than made up for it. The hut still wasn't much to look at—and it didn't seem so big when he could see it better—but it _did_ feel less like a tomb and more like a place where someone could live now.

"There. That's a pretty good one, if I do say so myself, huh, Din?" Paz elbowed Din in the ribs at the conclusion of this statement, turning his head to get a look at his companion's face.

Din, surprised that Paz even remembered his name in the first place, nodded dumbly.

In turn, Paz swiveled around to inspect Din's handiwork with the bed.

"Good. You pushed into the corner, too, just like I would have."

The Mandalorian clapped a hand on Din's shoulder and stood up, leaving Din on his knees in front of the flames.

"So, what's the deal with your _buir_?" Paz asked after he had collapsed onto his bed and crossed his arms behind his head leisurely. "He's coming back, right?"

Din stared as hard as he could at the flames, the now-familiar pull of the void in his chest drying his words into nothing. His head still raced with questions, though. He picked at the hem of his pants-leg, hoping Paz would leave at that. But he should have learned by now that the excitable Mandalorian was not easily ignored.

"You _can_ talk, can't you? Is he not really your _buir_ yet…just your _cabur_ maybe?"

Din did not reply, even though part of him really wanted to. Paz had quite literally dragged his bed across the town just to make sure he didn't spend his first night here alone. And, as with Raanan, surely that act of unwarranted kindness had to count for something.

_So why can't I_ _**speak** _ _?_

_Why do I still feel like I'm sleeping without resting?_

"Hey! You can _hear_ , too, right?!"

Din heard the annoyance in the other kid's voice, and he turned around, opened his mouth.

"I…I don't know what a _buir_ is. Or…that other thing you said."

Paz stared at him for a moment, and then he laughed a laugh that was oddly stunted through the helmet. The clan-born Mandalorian then sat up and shoved himself closer to the edge of the bed, throwing his feet over the side and kicking them somewhat wildly, as if he had too much energy to keep penned up any longer.

Which was probably the case, Din thought.

"Right. I should have figured. You haven't been a foundling for very long—you don't even have a helmet yet. Sorry about that, _burc'ya_."

Din shook his head. There was nothing to be sorry about. He didn't understand it himself, and a big part of him didn't even want to. There was an awkward pause for a moment and then, surprising even himself, Din spoke.

"Do you ever take the helmet off?"

Paz looked at him.

"Not in front of another person. Has your… _cabur_ not told you this yet? About the Way of the Mandalore?"

There was a new note in Paz's voice when he said that, something cautious and more mature than anything Din had ever heard in his friends' voices back on Aq Vetina. He remembered Raanan's words before they came here—

_For your own sake, probably—I'd keep any details you might think you know of me on the down-low. Particularly when it comes to my helmet habits._

"I…I haven't been with him very long. He hasn't r—really talked to me about what Mandalorians are like."

It wasn't a lie. He and Raanan hadn't talked much about _anything_ , and Din had wanted to keep it that way. He just hoped Paz wouldn't push the matter—what if these warriors hated other Mandalorians who didn't follow the same rules they did? What if they got angry at _him_ about it? He had seen the violence of which they were capable, and never in a million light-years did he want to be on the receiving end of it ( _again_ ).

Fortunately, however, Paz didn't say anything else about the subject Din himself had breached. His scuffed helmet tilted toward the fire, and Din found his own gaze trailing back to its mesmerizing cadence, too.

"Do you know why I really came here tonight?"

There was that solemnity again, that dark confidence in Paz's voice—the kind Din had only ever really heard before in adults. It gave him a weird feeling, made him look at Paz differently, see the oddity in the other boy's sudden shifting from energetic and forceful to solemn and borderline gentle.

"Your _cabur_ was wrong to leave you here. I don't know how long you've been with him or what he rescued you from, but it doesn't matter. He should be here with you—teaching you the Way. Because the Way is what matters more than anything to the true Mandalorians."

Din cocked his head, and the questions bubbled up inside him again. Their presence still felt wrong, though. Tainted—as if his curiosity was surfacing too soon, too soon after what had happened.

"So, since he's not going to do that, I'm going to teach you all _I_ know, OK?"

Paz's voice had once again regained its youth and lightness. The boy slid off his rickety bed, which wobbled and groaned after the abuse it had taken when they had hauled it through the door. He came and sat down next to Din, drawing his knees closer to his chest in a rough imitation of his smaller companion.

Din just looked at the fire, a lump in his throat, tears burning in his eyes, unsure if he should speak even if he could find the words within himself. He did not look at the Paz's helmet, obviously tilted toward him, reading everything on his face even though Din could read nothing on his. Paz's words bounced around inside his head with so many other things he could never quite pin down.

_Fire—_

_The Way of the Mandalore—_

_Droids—_

_I'll teach you all I know—_

_Cabur, buir?_

_Raanan said—_

_**Home—** _

_Do you trust this?—_

_Don't cry now again please I don't want to—_

The tears, Din thought, plucking the threat of their arrival out of his ceaseless stream of thoughts with sudden forcefulness.

These tears were not the sharp, angry tears he had been crying for the past couple of days. These tears were more like the ones he cried when he skinned his knees playing with his friends, or when he banged his elbow against the door of his home because he was being too careless as he sprinted inside. These would dry quickly, and when they did, maybe he would even feel better because of them.

Paz kept going, and Din found himself able to listen closer than before.

"I'll show you how to live here. And you're going to like it—maybe not at first, but eventually," he said, and then he paused, as if thinking hard about the words he was going to chose.

"It's actually kind of fun when there's others around. And even though the history lessons are long and boring, my _buir_ says that I'll like sharing them one day. You probably will, too."

There was another awkward pause, and then Paz crossed the short gap between them with his arm to punch Din on the shoulder.

"You hearing all this, mudscuffer? _Buir_ said it would probably be a good idea to try and talk to you instead of just attacking you, so I'm trying. Hard."

Din had never heard someone use the word 'mudscuffer' before, and—despite all the pain and confusion of the past couple of days and despite the way he still couldn't find it within himself to speak, Din felt the smallest of smiles creep across his face as he considered its context, at how it made him feel a little lighter and a little farther away from sinking beneath waves he couldn't understand or even see.

_But isn't it still too soon?_

_How can I even be close to feeling better right now?_

He scanned the Paz's unreadable helmet and thought about the fact that neither one of them knew each other at all. He thought about the violent way in which Paz had introduced himself, and then he glanced over at the bed that the other boy had literally dragged into what was supposed to be Din and Raanan's hut ( _before Raanan_ _ **left**_ _)._ Din considered everything that Paz had said before and everything his parents had said a few days ago and everything Raanan had said and—

That was what was what it took.

The void in his chest retreated for the first time since it had appeared. A pervasive pressure released in his chest, invisible, heavy in ways he hadn't even realized until it was gone.

The pain and the tears were still there, but there was something else. There was a sense that maybe things wouldn't be this way forever. That maybe one day he would again be able to breathe without crying, sleep without dreaming, and smile without feeling black inside.

That maybe he wasn't—at this moment—completely _alone_.

"Thank you," Din said quietly, and he saw how Paz's helmet jerked over to him in surprise. "For coming over here. And for the fire. I—I didn't really want to stay in here alone."

Almost without missing a beat, Paz replied.

"This is the Way."

Din looked over at him again, considered parroting the words back to him—as Raanan had hesitantly done earlier—and then decided he didn't have to. He looked back into the fire, and they sat there for a few more minutes in silence. Din let his head fill with the crackling of the flames and found that anytime the now-familiar images of his village burning—of his parents' faces staring down at him, shrouded in shadow in smoke—began to push into his head, all he had to do was refocus on this hut, on the fire, on the fact that someone sat beside him.

It made the memories grow smoky, and that was the best he could hope for tonight.

He was so lost in this mental tug-of-war, simultaneously pushing memories away and wrenching his thoughts into the present, that he didn't notice the signs of Paz's agitation—the foot-tapping, the fidgeting, the repeated swinging of his gaze from one side of the hut to the other—until a sudden realization made the Mandalorian boy fairly explode with repressed energy.

"I forgot the weapons!" he shouted.

And just like that, the moment shattered and Paz had leapt to his feet, thrown open the door, and sprinted into the darkness beyond. Din didn't even have time to register what he had said before he was left alone in the hut, a wash of cold air taking advantage of the open door to sweep in behind Paz's vanished figure.

Din didn't know what he was supposed to be expecting, but not a full minute later, Paz returned. He pretty much stumbled in through the doorway, a large, semi-flat bag of some kind draped across the entire length of his back. The Mandalorian grunted as he kicked the door shut again, and then he heaved the bag up over his back and onto the floor, where it landed with a dusty thump in the firelight.

Paz looked up at Din with triumph written in every tilt of his posture.

"Weapons," the Mandalorian said firmly.

Din eyed the bag with suspicion.

"Why did you bring weapons? Are we in danger?"

Paz snorted at Din's question and shook his head vigorously, as if that idea were entirely repugnant to him.

"No way. I brought them for _you_."

Din's mouth went dry.

"Me?"

"Yeah. These are actually my _buir's_ , but I figured that if you're going to become a proper Mandalorian, you need to get used to them now. And if he asks, I'll tell them _I'm_ the one who gave one to you. Don't worry."

But Din was worried.

"I…I've never used a weapon. I don't wa—"

"No, no, Din," Paz interrupted, kneeling down and undoing the clasps that held the wide front flap of the bandolier-like bag closed. "This is a _gift_. And you don't want to turn down the gift of a friend, do you?"

The way that Paz's helmet froze in place, the dark visor aimed directly at Din's face, and the way his voice lowered an entire octave or two with that statement, made Din think that maybe that's exactly what Paz wanted him to do—to decline this gift. He didn't know what would happen if he _did_ decide to forego accepting the weapon, but suddenly he didn't want to find out.

So, he watched quietly as Paz finished undoing the bag and then unfolded it, throwing its two flaps open to reveal what appeared to be an entire personal arsenal of weapons, from small blasters to big blasters to small mechanical devices that Din was entirely clueless as to the identity of.

Paz pointed fiercely at a mid-sized blaster.

"That right there is a BlasTech DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol," he proclaimed. "It's a pretty new design, but _Buir_ says he thinks it's going to be a favorite in the galaxy before long."

Din stared at the weapon, trying not to think about the kind of destruction it was capable of—the kinds of things it could burn through.

Paz pointed at another weapon—this time one of the bigger weapons in the array spread out before them.

"And _that, burc'ya_ , is a WESTAR-35 blaster pistol." Paz ran a finger along the sleek surface of the pistol and looked back up Din. There was an unmistakable grin in his voice when he said, "most of us use carry at _least_ one of these with us at all times."

Din stared some more, and then Paz rocked back onto his heels and put his hands in his lap.

"So, what'll it be?"

Din's gaze shot up.

"What?"

"Which weapon do you want, bucketbrains? Pick any one you like. I won't pressure you one way or the other, though I do suggest that the—"

Din swallowed and spoke up before Paz could finish his sentence.

"I don't want a weapon. I'm…supposed to be peaceful. I don't fight."

A moment of heavy silence followed his rush of words, and Din dropped his gaze to the floor, away from the weapons. When Paz finally spoke, his voice carried less energy than a few moments before, but it carried no less force. And it wasn't inherently unkind.

"You don't have to use it yet. Just pick one, OK? This is a good first step, foundling, as my _Buir_ says. And it isn't a very big one."

Din looked again at the weapons, feeling unease blossom in his gut, sweat beading on his palms. He didn't want to. He didn't want a weapon—he wasn't going to fight. He wasn't a Mandalorian. He wasn't ready for any of this.

_I'm sorry, amma and dada. I won't use it. I'll just do it for Paz—because he's been nice to me._

Before he could think too much harder about it, Din pointed at a small rectangular box in a slim pocket on one corner of the modified bandolier.

"That one," he whispered.

To his surprise, Paz hesitated.

"That one. Really?"

Din looked into Paz's visor uncertainly.

"Yes?"

Paz looked down at the little piece he had pointed out—perhaps the most inconspicuous option of the entire bunch—and then he shrugged, reached down, and pulled it out of its tiny sleeve. He turned it over a few times, then glanced back up at Din.

"Alright, but…don't press any buttons or anything on it. You probably need a vambrace before you actually use this—maybe some training, too."

He handed the little rectangle to Din, who accepted it gingerly and examined it without any real interest.

"What is it?"

"It's, uh…it's a flamethrower cartridge," Paz said, slowly closing the flaps on the weapons-holder once more.

Din's eyes widened.

" _What?_ "

"Well," Paz said hastily. "It's not a _complete_ flamethrower. It might not even work without the rest of the pack and the vambrace clip, but…"

Paz stood up and shifted uncertainly, looking down at Din on the floor.

"I don't know if they randomly explode or anything, so I'd just watch out."

Din swallowed and looked back down at the unassuming cartridge he held. It _was_ oddly heavy for its size, he thought, and he could see now where it might connect to something else on the bottom. And there, at the end, was a hole where he assumed the beginnings of a flame sprouted from. He wiggled the contraption slightly and was somewhat alarmed to just barely feel the slosh of fluid inside.

He stood up quickly as Paz turned around. Paz had deposited the bandolier, much more carefully than when he had brought it inside, in one corner of the hut, and he swiped his hands together thoughtfully as he turned to face Din.

"Are you sure I should have this?" Din asked quietly when it seemed that Paz was looking at him again.

Paz waved a hand at him and then walked to sit on his bed. His voice seemed annoyed as he replied.

"Yeah, yeah. Just tuck it away, why don't you. I'm ready to go to bed."

Din obliged immediately, placing the cartridge in his nearly empty pack near his nest of blankets as quickly as he dared. He scooted away on his backside, away from the pack and into his makeshift bed, as soon as it left his hands.

When he looked back up, knowing his eyes were still wide and feeling like none of what had happened tonight was entirely real, he found Paz staring at him. He frowned.

"What?"

By way of response, Paz sighed—long and hard.

"Because, _burc'ya_ ," Paz said, pouring an immense amount of exasperated inflection into his first word. "I'm going to have to sleep on the floor tonight after all."

Din's eyebrows dipped in confusion.

He was getting a little bit disoriented by all these strange mood and topic shifts. And hadn't Paz dragged a bed across town just so he _didn't_ have to sleep on the floor? Weren't they just talking about _weapons?_

"But—"

"Shut up," Paz muttered before Din could completely solidify his next statement in his own head. Paz crossed his arms and leaned against his bed with the kind of aggressive energy Din had come to realize was most likely inseparable from Paz's personality.

"Look, I know I brought my bed. But you're a guest, and my _b_ _uir_ would probably whap me in the helmet if he knew I was letting you sleep in that sorry pile of blankets. On the floor. In the _dirt_."

Din glanced back at his 'sorry' pile of blankets, realization dawning on him.

"I'm OK, really," he said hastily. He shoved his legs farther under the blanket as if to verify the statement, but secretly he knew he really would be able to sleep better on an actual bed rather than on the unforgiving floor. And yet—

But Paz shouldn't have to sacrifice his own comfort for Din's—he'd done enough just by making sure he wasn't alone tonight. And, in his own way, Din supposed, by even letting him choose one of his _buir's_ weapons as his very own.

"No, you're not."

"But I am, Paz. You really don't have to—"

Without warning, Paz pushed away from the bed and marched toward Din. The foundling didn't even have time to react before the Mandalorian reached down, grabbed Din roughly by the collar, and heaved him to his feet.

Paz's helmet was only inches away from Din's face as he laid out his ultimatum.

"Listen here, _burc'ya_ ," he snarled, the word sounding more threatening than it ever had before. "I'm going to sleep on the floor like a filth-licking womp rat, and you're gonna sleep on the bed. No more talking. No more complaining."

Paz unceremoniously shoved Din toward the bed, and Din stumbled roughly into it. Din's head was scrambling with all kinds of thoughts and his heart was pounding as he whirled around to look at Paz again. He felt like his eyes were bugging out of his head.

_What is going_ _**on** _ _?_

But instead of watching him, Paz was already laying down and throwing one of the thin blankets Raanan had packed for Din on top of himself. Din's mouth dropped open.

After a moment of this—a moment in which Paz rolled over so that he was facing the wall—Paz spoke again.

"What are you looking at? I know there's not a blanket on the kriffing bed, but you won't freeze. I need them down here."

Din closed his mouth and swallowed. He looked at the bed and then at the violent, unpredictable boy sleeping where he himself had been lying not even a full hour before, when Raanan had risen up and left him by himself.

"Th—thank you," Din whispered after a second, not entirely sure if that was an appropriate response to what had just transpired.

Paz muttered something unintelligible—but unmistakably grumpy—in response, and Din climbed without another word onto the bed.

It was so much more comfortable than the pallet on the floor, and even without any blankets or a pillow, he felt his tight muscles relax almost immediately. He sighed involuntarily and closed his eyes against the wave of exhaustion that rushed across him.

"Yeah, well, goodnight, _burc'ya_ ," Paz said after Din had laid there for a moment. The Mandalorian's voice was still sullen, but he didn't seem wholly angry.

"G—goodnight," Din replied quietly.

The fire snapped and crackled in the silence between them, and Din thought again of everything that had happened today. He had woken up this morning with such a heavy weight on his chest—something that felt like it crushed everything out of him, like it was eating him alive from the inside out.

But by the end of the day—or, rather, by the middle of the night, he thought wryly—the weight had been lifted. It had not been lifted completely, of course, and when he blinked he still saw the attack on his village and heard his parents' voices brushing by his ear, but those things didn't paralyze him anymore.

They didn't make his chest feel like it was being torn in two.

Now, as he lay here in the glow of the fire, feeling sleep caress the edges of his consciousness in a way that he welcomed, feeling his heartbeat slow to a steady rhythm, he breathed freely.

He still didn't understand what was going on—Paz's actions had raised so many more questions than they had answered—but he knew that he could trust the Mandalorian. Even though his peer tended to opt for violence over peace when it came to even simple matters, the boy had not shown any indication that he wanted to truly _hurt_ Din.

And he had stayed—sought Din out—when Raanan had not.

_That was good, right?_

As sleep truly claimed Din, who found it impossible to fight unconsciousness even though the circumstances of the night were far from ideal or even sensible, the memories and questions flickering across the back of his eyelids slowly dissolve. And then the foundling heard himself asking one question that refused to go away until it had been spoken out loud.

"What does _burc'ya_ mean?"

The fire rose suddenly, flinging a spark onto the floor with a loud pop and rustle as the wood readjusted itself. Din fought full unconsciousness as he strained his ears to hear the reply to his question—

_Did I even ask it out loud?_

And then a voice drifted through the dark, calm once more, brimming with the assurance of an adult and not the irrepressible excitement of the young Mandalorian Din had become acquainted with over the course of a single hour.

"Friend," Paz said simply.

Friend, Din thought, his thoughts going soft and wispy, like the fleeting threads of dreams. His eyelids slipped down completely then, blocking out the world and all the challenges that came with it, carrying him into the first true rest he had experienced since the tragedies of Aq Vetina.

_Burc'ya means friend._

* * *

_**Mando'a Translations:** _

_Buir:_ mother, father (parent)

 _Cabur_ : guardian, protector

 _Burc'ya_ : friend ( **ahem** )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we go! The more hopeful chapter I promised you guys. It was very long, I know, but I really hope you enjoyed it all the same. I've had these snippets with Paz in my head for a while now, and I'm glad Din got a bit of a break. What did y'all think? Are things going like you thought they might? :D
> 
> Thanks again for reading and/or favoriting, following, and reviewing. I can't tell you how much each and every one of the notifications I get for this story means to me, so I really hope whoever sticks with this story continues to enjoy it! The next chapter will catch back up with whumpy-present-Din. It's been written since before I wrote these past two chapters, so maybe the quality will be decent. XD
> 
> Also, just as a NOTE: from this point on, the memories will be more spaced out. I can't exhaustively cover the twenty-plus years of Din's backstory in this single fic, so now that I've got the groundwork for his life out of the way, I'll focus more on SINGLE defining/turning points of his life rather than his upbringing as a foundling.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! I hope you guys have a wonderful day/night. Until next time! :)
> 
> ~Roanoke
> 
> "Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, 'I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life."
> 
> -John 8:12


	8. Blood and Loyalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back in the present, a foundling playing a game in the branching hallways of the Covert stumbles across someone she wasn't quite looking for. As a result, Paz Vizsla finds himself in a situation he wasn't looking for either, and he struggles to confront it with as much tact and tolerance as he can muster. Which turns out to be a surprisingly small amount, given how he's been feeling about things lately.

**[The Present]**

**Approximately 9 ABY.**

**( _Mando'a translations at end)_**

* * *

The foundling crept through the familiar hallways of the Covert as quietly as she could.

She rested her weight in the balls of her feet—breathing shallowly through her nose—and scanned the darting shadows of the corridor to either side of her as she advanced. She was the seeker. The other foundlings—both the helmeted ones and the ones who had yet to swear to the Creed, like her—were the hiders.

At any moment, she thought, a furious explosion of footsteps as a hider sprinted away or even the glint of a polished helmet would mean the chase was on. She had to be ready. She pulled in a slow breath to calm the pattering of her heart in her chest. She’d lost this game many times already to the older, stronger, more experienced foundlings. But _this_ time, she would win. She just knew it.

So, when her eyes skated across a gleam of Beskar near one of the alcoves the adult Mandalorians used as their quarters, she grinned and lowered her center of gravity still more. She locked her gaze on the spot. She had the advantage here; the hider had yet to see her, which meant she could creep even closer, get farther within range to tag him once he _did_ notice her coming. Which could be at any moment—

With a mischievous gleam burning in her eyes, the foundling stepped closer. The silver Beskar, a portion of which was just barely illuminated by a drooping ream of late morning light, still did not move.

Now slightly puzzled as she moved forward—she knew her comrades were better at hide-and-go-seek than _that_ —she straightened slightly and felt her grin fade a little. What kind of position for hiding was that anyway? Surely the other foundling would have heard her approach by now. And it would be no fun if the hider didn’t see her at all and was tagged without a chase.

When she was within twenty feet, however, and when the perpetual gloom of the Covert seemed to shift just enough to lend her a better glimpse of what she was seeing, she sucked in a breath. Her pulse jumped as if she _were_ sprinting after her fleeing quarry—

But she wasn’t furiously pursuing a hider because the Beskar didn’t belong to a hiding foundling—

It belonged to an _actual_ Mandalorian—

An adult Mandalorian, one who was sprawled motionless at the entrance of his alcove—

One who might even be dead.

The foundling’s gut instinct, which surprised even her, was to jump forward, to check for a pulse as her _buir_ had taught her when she first come under her care years ago. But when she came within just a few feet of the Mandalorian, whose mismatched armor was scuffed and torn and so _still_ , she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

She was too afraid.

She didn’t want to reach just underneath the lip of the helmet and find no warmth, no surge of life beneath her fingers. She wasn’t even sure what it would really mean if that did happen because her _buir_ never really went into detail about that part. And she didn’t want to find out all by herself, with not even another foundling around to help her.

Instead, she turned, game forgotten, and sprinted as hard as she could for the center chamber, where she knew other Mandalorians would be. Where help would be. Where maybe even the _baar’ur_ would be.

She burst into it not long after, and the warm buzz of several low voices washed over her, pulled away a little when the occupants of the room noticed how she bent over her knees, aglow with adrenaline, gasping for the air that would not come and pushing away the loose jittery feeling that now lived in her every muscle.

She raised up, hands on her knees, as she sucked in gulps of air, searching the room for a Mandalorian of her _buir’s_ own clan out of instinct more than anything. Fortunately, she spotted one almost immediately. The big one. Paz Vizsla.

“ _Baar’ur_ ,” she gasped, looking straight at Paz and then at any Mandalorian whose helmet was turned toward her. “There’s a fallen Mandalorian in the corridor. He needs a _baar’ur_!”

* * *

Paz barely glanced over when the unhelmeted foundling rushed into the center chamber.

The foundlings played games in the Covert all the time, darting in and out of the many hidden nooks of the sewer system at all hours of the day. He had done the same once, in a different place—and, if he were being completely honest, he would probably do it again given the chance. It would certainly be more exciting than sitting around _rotting_ , he thought as he curled his fingers around the sleek rifle he had cleaned several times already in these past few hours.

This morning he was too far into his own head—buzzing with black thoughts and seething, unspoken words—that even if he had taken the time to fully register the fact that the panting foundling was of the Vizsla clan herself, he would have hardly cared.

That is, until she said there was a Mandalorian somewhere who needed a _baar’ur_.

He was on his feet immediately, as were the two others who had been seated at the table just behind his. His gaze jumped across the room to where he knew the _baar’ur_ sat, engaged in a dismal game of cards with another of her clan. She was a thin woman with a sharp voice and cold fingers, and already she was striding toward the foundling who had come bearing the news of their fallen comrade. Their fallen brother or sister.

Paz put a hand out to stop two Mandalorians who were stepping toward the foundling as well.

“I’ll assist her,” Paz said lowly. “The foundling is of my clan.”

The other two hesitated before nodding in assent. He was the broadest and no doubt the strongest of the Mandalorians currently gathered in the chamber anyway, and the foundling who had discovered the fallen Mandalorian _was_ a charge of the Vizsla clan. He should be the one to assist the Mandalorian the foundling had discovered. The _baar’ur_ would most likely need help moving her patient, too, and having too many others around her as she worked would only make things more difficult for both her and the one she sought to heal.

The foundling led the way once the medic obtained her bag, and Paz matched her trotting steps easily, cold unease settling into his gut.

There should not have been any Mandalorians out the night before, and as far as he knew, no Mandalorians had left the Covert this morning either. That meant that this Mandalorian would have probably been injured prior to last night’s celebrations. But he didn’t remember any of his brothers or sisters-in-arms sporting even minor injuries then. Who was this wounded Mandalorian? How had he been injured—and how serious were his wounds if he was unresponsive? Or was the foundling being dramatic, as it was all too easy to be if one was a bored and mischievous child, roaming the darkness and dust of the Covert’s many hallways?

The Mandalorians’ numbers—even with the foundlings they brought in at increasingly unpredictable intervals—were dwindling more each day. And it seemed that even the secrecy and dedication of the Covert could not keep that from happening—not when their spirits were wasting away even faster than their bodies. Paz curled his fingers and walked faster, steps ringing sharply down the wide hallway, impatience now blossoming alongside the unease as he became aware of just how slow the pace of this foundling was.

“Where is he?” Paz growled at the little girl before he cared to stop himself.

The foundling, panting in front of him, stopped suddenly by way of reply and then pointed down one branch of the hallway they had paused in front of. She looked wordlessly back at Paz and the _baar’ur_ , dark eyes large, flushed spots visible on both cheeks. Paz nodded, flitting his eyes away for her bare face, and then he and the _baar’ur_ were moving forward faster than before, their gaze already on the gleam of silver and that jutted just beyond the threshold of an alcove.

A quarter of the way there, Paz realized who it was.

He should have known earlier, he thought. Somehow. What other Mandalorian in the Covert had chosen not to—been _told_ not to—participate in the festivities the night before and would have been able to conceal his injuries accordingly?

_Ge’talsol_ , perhaps the most distinguished bounty hunter the Covert had.

And which Mandalorian was most likely to pull a stunt like this—getting himself hurt, hiding it like a kriffing idiot, and then laying the drama on even thicker by passing out in a hallway for some unlucky passerby to deal with his sorry backside?

The Mandalorian he once knew as a friend, of course.

The _baar’ur_ reached him first and was already kneeling beside his head, fingers slipped just beneath the lip of his helmet and pressed against the artery at his neck, when Paz came close enough to see the situation clearly. The cloth that covered the entrance to the alcove lay near him, partially grasped in the one hand stretched above his helmet, and there was a dark smear of dried blood stretching out from the curled, bare fingertips of his other hand, just lightly brushing the floor.

Paz couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not—it was too dark and his armor was too thick.

“Help me to his cot,” the _baar’ur_ snapped suddenly. “His pulse is weak, but it’s there.”

Something hot and tight flashed through his chest.

_Irritation,_ Paz realized. _Anger_. _Maybe even concern, though I wouldn’t know **why** I should be concerned._

And yet he leaned down anyway, not even grunting against the other Mandalorian’s relatively light weight as he pulled him off the floor. He wasn’t particularly careful as he let his burden collapse against the cot, and the _baar’ur_ must have noticed because her helmet tilted up to his sharply as she undid her bag’s clasps.

“Gentler, Vizsla. Do you know him?”

Paz looked down at _Ge’talsol_ , at the familiar helmet, at the worn armor that had been cobbled together from several other Mandalorians’—including his own at one point—and he did not answer her question. He scanned the unconscious Mandalorian’s form.

“What’s wrong with him?”

The _baar’ur_ looked back down, scanning her patient for herself, noting each potential area of damage. She cocked her head and then moved to the other side of the cot, squeezing bodily past Paz, as if he weren’t even there. She dug into her bag and pulled out a knife before moving fluidly to cut away a few straggling shreds of cloth on the Mandalorian’s thigh—right where the guard that should have been there was _not_ and a lot of blood _was_.

Paz wasn’t entirely sure how he had missed that. He didn’t really care either. If a Mandalorian lost or neglected to put on his armor, he deserved to get hurt for it.

As she worked, gently clearing the area so she could attend to the wound beneath, Paz scanned the room, looking for any kinds of clues as to what exactly happened. He’d talked to _Ge’talsol_ the night before, hadn’t he? And he had sounded fine. Annoying as ever just by virtue of the fact that he _was_ talking, maybe, but still fine.

Certainly not like he was dying, which is what it would seem like if someone walked in right at this second and saw him limp on the bloody cot.

_The very bloody cot_.

Paz looked back at the _baar’ur_ , who had stopped cutting and was now probing the wound with two gloved fingers, on her knees so she could see the injury in all its gruesome detail. She had her helmet-lamp switched on, and it illuminated the area in a wash of sterile white. Paz didn’t bother trying to get a view of the wound himself. He didn’t care. The _baar’ur_ would do whatever she needed to. Though he was pretty sure all that blood wasn’t just from the leg injury.

The _baar’ur_ ’s patient had yet to make a sound, however, and Paz folded his hands in front of him with a sharp sigh, training his eyes on _Ge’talsol_ ’s beat-up chestplate, watching intently for some sign that he really was alive.

“Definitely an infection,” the _baar’ur_ said after a moment, quietly enough that she seemed to be talking more to herself than to Paz. “Fever, multiple lacerations on the torso, the limbs…”

She paused, cocked her head again as if listening for something, and then shook it.

She rummaged around in her bag again and removed what appeared to be a stethoscope. Her helmet tilted to Paz impatiently.

“Can you remove his chestplate?”

Paz moved forward wordlessly, that same irritation as before rising within him, though he still didn’t know exactly where it was coming from. Regardless of their personal history as friends and then adversaries, _Ge’talsol_ was still a Mandalorian. And he was wounded, which meant that it was Paz’s honor and duty to aid in his recovery as much as he could.

_Even if he’s basically a traitor_?

_Even if he’s weak and a coward and a liar?_

Paz grunted as he reached around to undo the straps that secured the chestplate to the Mandalorian’s front. He didn’t register what the sudden hitch in breath below him meant, however, and that was his mistake because suddenly _Ge’talsol_ was alive and fighting.

The first blow, bare-knuckled and off-kilter as it was, caught Paz blindly across the ridged cheek of his helmet, and his head snapped to the side enough to send a mild flash of pain through his neck. _Ge’talsol_ ’s second hand moved to Paz’s chestplate at the same time as the punch and shoved against it, hard but not nearly hard enough to actually budge his perceived assailant.

But even as unconventional as the situation was, Paz’s years of training kicked as soon as that first unexpected blow landed. He didn’t even try to fight his instincts—he wasn’t sure he could have even if he had wanted to, not after the kind of day he’d been having already.

With a rush of blood and no time or will to think about _who_ was doing the “attacking,” his own fist was coming down, landing a ringing blow across the wounded Mandalorian’s helmet. Pinning the man down with a knee in the gut—earning him a whoosh of exhaled breath and a barely audible hiss of pain—Paz completed his counter-attack with a lunge forward to grip _Ge’talsol’s_ extended wrist in one unyielding fist.

It all happened in the span of three seconds, perhaps, and he wasn’t even registering ( _or maybe didn’t want to?_ ) that the Mandalorian beneath him had gone almost completely limp again after the first round of exertion, his helmet lolling from side to side—

And then Paz was hit across the face from the side _again_ , harder—this time by the end of the _baar’ur_ ’s staff. Which he hadn’t even known she carried with her.

“Mandalorian! Control!” she shouted.

Paz’s grip relaxed instantly as he realized what had happened, and he shoved himself away from _Ge’talsol_ , whose chest he could now see rising and falling heavily beneath the chestplate Paz had been about to loosen. The wounded man’s breath had devolved into wheezes. Wheezes that weren’t entirely due to the near-beating Paz had just given him.

Something close to guilt—but not quite there yet—washed over Paz, leaving a red buzz inside of him as it faded away. He grunted and stepped back farther, as far away as he could get in the stupid, tiny room. The _baar’ur_ had lowered her staff, apparently picking up on the fact that Paz hadn’t _really_ meant anything by his hasty actions.

“Wh—what are you doing?”

_Ge’talsol’s_ voice was thick and unexpected as it rang out of his helmet, and he tried to pull himself into a sitting position as he spoke despite the little brawl that had nearly taken place. He was rewarded only with a tight, strangled cry of pain and the _baar’ur’s_ hand pressing gently on his chest, urging him to lie back again and relax in spite of the adrenaline Paz knew was already hot in his veins.

“We’re saving your life,” Paz growled, _almost_ before he thought better of it given the stunt he had almost pulled.

_Ge’talsol’s_ helmet dipped toward his voice.

“Paz?”

Paz snorted at the surprise in the other man’s voice, though the vulnerability the other man's tone betrayed seemed familiar in a way that made Paz want to do anything _but_ laugh.

“Yeah. Shocking, isn’t it?”

The _baar’ur_ watched the exchange silently, but when her patient broke into a round of coughing—coughing that sounded wet and unpleasant beneath the helmet, she reached back into her bag, pulled out what appeared to be handheld scanner of some sort.

“Where is your worst injury, Mandalorian?” she asked, firmly and rightly ignoring Paz now.

Paz nearly snorted again at the question, the warm buzz of his conflicting emotions winding tighter and tighter within him even as he tried to tamp it down with the pressure of his own clenched fists. Even he knew the worst injury had to be the leg wound. Though Paz wasn’t sure why because most Mandalorians he knew had survived as much and more without collapsing dramatically in their alcove over it.

_Weak_ —

“Leg,” _Ge’talsol_ grunted, one hand reaching for his leg instinctively, as if by wrapping his already-stained fingers around it he could squeeze away the pain. The _baar’ur_ reached forward, took up his reaching hand, pressed it listlessly to the cot again.

“Is there anything else that needs immediate attention?” she asked as she waved the scanner slowly in the air above his wound. It beeped a moment later and she pulled it away to inspect its reading.

“N—no.”

His voice was quieter now, as if he were slipping away, and the _baar’ur_ hummed as if she didn’t quite believe his assessment of his own injuries. She reached forward and prodded at his ribcage in a way that seemed unnecessary to Paz but that jolted her patient back into full consciousness with a flash of pain.

_Cracked ribs, then. Maybe broken. Maybe worse._

“You have an infection and a fever. Do you remember how you received these injuries?”

“I think Felucia,” he murmured in response, voice thicker than ever. Paz breathed quietly out through his mouth, looking away from _Ge’talsol_.

“The fever at least. Been—been less than that for the leg,” _Ge’talsol_ finished after a moment.

The _baar’ur_ shook her head, as if his words meant little to her. They certainly meant nothing to Paz. Who kept up with comings and goings of an individual Mandalorian in the Covert anyway if not for his or her clan?

Which _Ge’talsol_ didn’t have, did he?

“Do you have medical supplies with you?”

They waited in silence for a few heartbeats before _Ge’talsol’s_ helmet turned to either side, as if he were looking for something. His fingers curled into fists and then relaxed again as his helmet finally stilled on one side, facing the wall opposite Paz.

“Aq Vetina,” he muttered, his words soft, low, spoken through an unmistakable haze of pained delirium. “He said they’d be here…Raanan…said…”

Paz looked back at the one he once called friend— _vod_ —despite himself.

_Ge’talsol_ was definitely feverish, sick, weary. Paz knew that, just as he knew the names he had just heard the wounded Mandalorian murmur. Because he and the mudscuffer lying on that cot _had_ been friends once, hadn’t they? They’d played together as children, fought together as Creed-sworn brothers, helped each other through more than a few tough spots before they had their final fight.

And Paz knew that Aq Vetina was _Ge’talsol’s—_ no, _Din’s_ , for that was the name neither one of them had spoken for many years—homeworld. He knew who Raanan was and what kind of ghosts that Mandalorian’s name conjured up for the man before him. And kriff him if Paz didn’t let that count for something right now, even if there was no chance on Malachor that Paz would ever lower himself to call Din a friend again. The red buzz flared in his chest again, but this time it seemed a little more bearable

“Mandalorian? Are you still with us?” the _baar’ur_ asked after a moment, after she had lifted his chestplate herself and checked whatever it was she had wanted to check—his heart, maybe his lungs. Paz hadn’t really been paying attention during that part.

When he didn’t reply, she checked his pulse at the wrist. Then she turned to Paz.

“Leave,” she said. “I will finish my assessment and tell you what must be done.”

Paz straightened.

“I’m to be his keeper?”

The _baar’ur_ stood, and he could tell by the tightness of her shoulders that she was annoyed—maybe even angry—over what had happened a mere minute ago, when Paz had almost beat an ill patient of hers into a fevered oblivion for pretty much no reason but his own hot, empty helmet.

Even if it _had_ been justified, Paz thought. In a roundabout kind of way.

“You are not his clan?”

“He doesn’t have a clan. Not anymore.”

The _baar’ur_ regarded him for a moment, and then turned again to her bag.

“Then find someone who will see him to full recovery.”

Paz dipped his head in acknowledgement and respect and then ducked carefully out of the tiny alcove, which he realized as he left seemed terribly cramped and warm with three bodies inside of it—one of which was feverish, no less.

He frowned as a knot of curious foundlings gathered in the corridor outside came into view.

“Get outta here!” Paz boomed, and the group broke into two halves, scurrying off into the darkness chased by their own whispers and even a few giggles.

Paz watched them go, and then he turned, looked back at where the _baar’ur_ was bent again over the infected wound, pasting an ointment-soaked bandage over the skin. Yes, the anger was still there, rustling inside him with every breath, but there was also something else.

An old duty, perhaps.

An old loyalty that once he had regarded as unbreakable.

Paz frowned, but he stayed until the _baar’ur_ came out of the room, peeling off her gloves, looking at him with unguarded tension in her posture. She nodded toward _Ge’talsol_ —or _Din_ , as his memory reminded him once more, irritatingly—and explained.

“I will come again in at nightfall to attend to his ribs and to administer further treatment. If the fever has not broken or the infection has not begun to retreat, he will need stronger medication and more supervision. If that is the case, we will move him to my quarters for constant monitoring.”

Paz nodded.

“You will not try to kill him again?” she asked, and now amusement—tainted as it was with the genuine question she was asking—was clear in her voice. Paz tried to shove down the way that made his fingers itch for a weapon.

“No.”

“Good,” she said. “ _Aliit ori’shya tal’din_.”

_Family is more than blood._

Though the familiar and deliberate saying felt itchy and dusty as it crashed against the flow of his thoughts, Paz nodded. That was the crux of it, after all. It wasn’t about him taking care of a former friend—it wasn’t even about him caring for someone valuable _as their own person_ to either him or his clan.

This was about caring for a fellow Mandalorian—another member of the Creed, of the only family any of them really had left—and that’s how he was going to have to look at it. The Mandalorians were family, so _Ge’talsol_ was family. _Hut’uun_ or not.

“This is the Way,” Paz said.

“This is the Way,” the _baar’ur_ echoed, already moving back the way she had come, taking her bag with her.

Inside the alcove, the wounded Mandalorian stirred. Paz clenched his jaw.

He had a bad feeling about this.

* * *

_**Mando'a Translations** _

_baar'ur:_ medic

_vod_ : brother

_Ge'talsol:_ the name Din has chosen to use in the Covert; a fusion of the Mando'a word for "red" and "one" ("the red one") [see prologue and A/N for Ch. 3 if you have any questions about this one]

_Aliit ori'shya tal'din:_ Family is more than blood

_hut'uun:_ coward (a very strong way of saying it, too)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Thank you for reading...I could honestly gush for a while about how absolutely AMAZING and incredibly SuPpOrTiVe you guys have been to me (seriously, I don't deserve it and I love you people), but I'll spare you for today and will just say that I hope you enjoyed.
> 
> I don't have too much experience writing whump - and I feel like I'mma have to do a little medical research soon - but it was kind of fun fleshing Din's Covert life out a little bit. Also, y'all got some perspective (and *fun* parallels) from adult Paz. Whoop, whoop! :D
> 
> Alright. See you later. God bless, lovely readers!
> 
> ~Roanoke  
> "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Thanks for stopping by...I hope you enjoyed it because--per the requirements of my inexplicable obsession with this show--there will likely be much more to follow. ;)
> 
> Note that this is definitely just an introduction, too, and it is set before the actual TV show. The real "meat" of the story is actually going to be a series of Din's memories...his backstory told through some of the defining moments of his life. Obviously, since we know little about his canonical backstory at this point, I'm going to take a lot of liberties and am undoubtedly going to introduce a host of short-lived characters (like the episodes do). However, what this prologue sets up (his illness and the dark place he's in right now) is going to be a plot laced all throughout the memories--I'll be referring you back to what's going on back at the Covert while he's basically tracing his entire life up to the point he's at (in a fevered state, of course).
> 
> Expect lots of whump, angst, hurt/comfort, action, and, yes, maybe just the barest hint of romance (M/F only). Paz and the Armorer will be recurring characters moving forward, and I'm thinking Greef Karga, Xi'an, and Qin will probably make an appearance, too (maybe a few).
> 
> Thanks again for reading--please let me know what you thought and any ideas you have for memories you want to see. The first memory, of course, is already taken, but there are plenty of slots for more. Looking forward to hearing from you, and God bless! :)
> 
> -Roanoke  
> (2nd Corinthians 4:16-18)


End file.
